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https://twitter.com/moneyries/status/908009558735572993
Though I enjoy the humor, this comic misses the same point I've heard made with other efforts where samaritanism is not at the core of the effort. SV is doing a lot of interesting stuff, and it's all driven by money. So much money that it has made a mess of the wage structuring in the entire area. People who aren't in tech can't afford to live in the area, so you've got school teachers living two hours away and commuting in every day. That's unsustainable. It will break, eventually.
It's like, people bitch about how there's not some major change coming from The Internet People and High Tech Sector, and they make fun of bullshit products like that juice-bag-squeezing startup — and rightfully so! They're not being given the things they want, but they are failing to acknowledge how much of their daily life has been already touched by having internet access on a palm-sized device they can take with them anywhere. Like, I'm not recommending this, but a college kid can potentially buy a $49 Kindle Fire and a $32 BT keyboard, and use it as a laptop for writing papers, using Silk to access Google Docs and Sheets for free. This is a <$100 solution based on the results of the free market producing something inexpensive and yet practical.
I feel there's a connection here, too, to the FOSS movement, where many outsiders are critical of how engineers have spent their time on it, saying that time could more productively be spent on finding a cure for cancer, or fixing the printer drivers, or improving the way screen real estate is handled in dialogs… BUT NONE OF THAT IS FUN, apparently! And we can't tell hobbyists what to enjoy in their spare time just because it's not helping us directly at this moment. When I hear people complain like this, I want to tell them to fuck off, grow up, go home, learn to code, and then be the change they want to see in the world.
:OLD_MAN_SHOUTS_AT_CLOUDS.gif
