>Hotels and taxi companies fear the sharing economy, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft.<p>I thought the sharing economy was bittorrent and Free Software. Aren't AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft part of the home piecework subcontractor temp-for-life economy?
"The government ... disrupted by a group of people building something on their laptops in Silicon Valley."<p>Right below this quote from your blog, in the "From around the web" section: "Obamacare could soon cause massive layoffs."<p>I think it's a magical time to get people wasting time on their phones, maybe solve some minor efficiency problems around the edges of Obamacare but SV is the worst possible choice to solve the big problems we're facing.
Government more or less created Silicon Valley (government subsidies, guaranteed government contracts, direct government investment), yet it is now "powerless"? If anything, Silicon Valley is a great example of the power of government.<p>Silicon Valley has yet to solve any of the big problems in the world; poverty, healthcare, climate change.<p>The idea that there's no war going on the world, or that you don't need universities is complete nonsense.<p>For sure some things are changing, but that's always been the case. This blog post, and the bizarre idea that everything must be "disrupted" (nobody knows exactly what that means) is a perfect example of the insular, ignorant, and shallow attitudes that pervade Silicon Valley.
>We build things, convince people to use them, and fight the status quo<p>How the status quo would fight the status quo?<p>Paraphrasing what a wise man once said:<p>How can a kingdom divided against itself survive?<p>The people behind all these cool new projects are the same people from the old industries, if thats not the reality in the beginning that soon will change as long its a profitable business.. the status quo may not be in the seed phase, or even in the initial funding, but definetly will be a part of it on the IPO.. and thats how even the cool projects end to serve the status quo..<p>The only way to really fight the status quo, the establishment is decentralizing profits and power.. otherwise, its always the same story, since the beginning of the civilization
This is magical thinking. The reality is that established players will use their positions to buy out, advertise out and just generally squeeze out any threats to their business.
>With MOOCs we no longer need universities to educate people.<p>I am not convinced of this. I think MOOCs are great and certainly a game changer for domains like computer science. But there's lots of domains that I know nothing about that I am not convinced I could master via an online course (e.g., biotech or anything else that requires expensive equipment).<p>Even where MOOCs are the best answer, isn't the best provider of a MOOC going to be a university? Maybe just what we think of as a university will change.
It's a magical time to have been born in a western country, but then that's been true for a while now.<p>By "every individual wields great power" you probably mean those with access to technology, relative peace, and education. War hasn't gone away we just don't fight them at home anymore.
Yeah, We'll learn how governments magically turned the 90s internet dream of anarchistic freedom into Big Brother.
And how network analysis, in real time, can instantly identify the core members of any "movement", and if "inappropriate" quickly stomp on them.