That graph does not imply anything about long term trends. It shows that there was a bubble in the late 90s, during which valuations spiked, and that the bubble caused a lot of lame people to start VC funds, which brought down average returns.
This is definitely an interesting point of view on the recent Wall Street interest on social media. I am glad someone brought it up, I do see the use and how social media and related innovations are convenient, but is a company that adds a vintage filter to a photo really progress in the long term? This is the question the author is suggesting. Personally I just roll my eyes over the next cutesy named "start up" that uses Bootstrap for their website. It seems like most of it is just an extension of social media or it's something that just causes more fragmentation in coding. Personally, VC investment should be focused on scientific and technological progress, personally I see that investment in Facebook is just misallocation of resources when it could be invested in scientific research into microprocessors or circuits or other real innovations. We need to promote the ideals and innovations of the next Steve Jobs, not the next Zuckerberg.
I like social and other vanity-in-appearance like companies. I think we are quick to discard them as trivial and non-beneficial, and quick to forget that they further accelerate the dissemination of information whether that information is useless (e.g. most memes) or fundamental to human development (e.g. arab springs). What does bug me is that a lot of the "innovation" in social is similar to the "innovation" in finance, where it's a bit of a stretch of the mind to accept that the "innovation" is truly beneficial for society at large, or that the utility derived from it matches the utility that could be derived from employing the technical talent behind it to other ends. We need a balanced world, but we also need to push the "human race forward."
The Huxley reference could also be used to describe the '80 and the '90. “Amusing Ourselves to Death” describes most of the second half of the XX century.<p>Information Technology is in a core scientific plateau, I also believe that's true, <i>but that does not mean the current development is trivial</i>. There are a new set of problems that need to be solved, problems in engineering, managment and law. Very important problems. And there <i>is</i> an inmense amount of value being created, and people with money want a piece of that. People that, otherwise, wouldn't invest in tech.<p>There is "hype", but then again, we <i>are</i> in the middle of a process that is change society into something that has never been in the history of mankind.
This apparently seems to equate VC returns with scientific progress. I think I need to see more support for that link, and I'd like to have seen discussion of (possible?) alternatives for supporting development, whether they exist now or have been proposed.