Diary: Google Invades

This kind of journalism really bugs me.<p>There are too many ways in which the author strains logic and reason. I think the companies of Silicon Valley are very interested in improving public transportation, but held back by an ineffective transit governance system. I think the comparison to the gold rush is ridiculous, as is the statement that "technology is just another boom" (what?). I think being a technology hub has done more to improve the lives of everyone in the Bay Area than any other human-controlled factor, but authors like this one are too concerned with irrelevant impressions and skin-deep, false comparisons to consider that.

Forced myself to read to the end so that I would be justified in saying what I had the impulse to howl from the third sentence: Rebecca Solnit, FUCK YOU.<p>It's actually quite well-written, but christ, what a pretentious, clueless, holier-than-thou, pseudo-pious pile of crap. Blamey dirges like this are why people hate liberals. It makes me hate them, and I am one. It's hard to know where to start, so I'll just dig in:<p>Why do you demean and dehumanize tech workers, while glorifying Latinos, homeless people, coal miners, and anyone who's lived in San Francisco since... 2006? 1996? 1976? How long do you have to live in SF to be fully human and deserving of empathy?<p>What do you have against German tourists and "Asian male nerds?" You are a bigot.<p>Why should people "drive themselves?" That's not noble-prole, it's stupid and wasteful. Fewer people should drive, period. Private or public, mass transit is mass transit. It's a Good Thing.<p>Why is capitalism "Janus-headed?" I think you don't understand capitalism. It has one face, with dollar-sign eyes. Which is ok. It's capitalism, not poetry. It's about capital.<p>Are rents being driven up, does growth create problems? Yes of course. Let's deal with those problems. Whining about them is just annoying, and paints you as a bitter person.<p>There's a solution, though. I say this as an erstwhile journalist, now software developer: Rebecca, you should learn Python. Then maybe you can get on the bus too.

Want cheaper housing? Make it possible to build more. The fact that quaint New England towns have taller apartment buildings than most of the city of SF pretty much tells the entire story.<p>The busses are basically the opposite of government intervention in a free market; instead of the government stepping in to correct for a market failure, private companies are stepping in to correct a public sector failure (to provide usable transit for their employees).

I stopped reading at " It means that unlike gigantic employers in other times and places, the corporations of Silicon Valley aren’t much interested in improving public transport, and in fact the many corporations providing private transport are undermining the financial basis for the commuter train."<p>This is such complete bullshit i don't even know where to start. Every single company in the area has either offered to help, is helping, or had their help refused when it comes to public transport.<p>It's not even a Google vs Apple vs whoever, they are <i>all</i> trying to help here <i>in any way they can</i>.<p>Of course, since the author cites absolutely no statements or support for any of their claims, i'm just going to file this in the "not even wrong" category

This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't live in SF, nor California for that matter, but this comes across as "I was living in SF before it was cool. Money is evil and so is anyone with it. Especially if they are young."<p>Every paragraph includes an insult, but one of my favorites was comparing tech companies to coal mining companies. Wow. Couldn't be further from the mark. The tech industry frees people to work remotely and is even willing to ship them in expenses paid in luxury. The coal mining companies enslaved people, paying pennies in fatally poor conditions.<p>Runner up was:<p>"...but still has a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations"<p>This insinuates that tech is less honorable than these jobs. Again, missing the mark, assuming that tech can't somehow help these people. Or perhaps people in the industry aren't creative or some other dismissive nonsense.<p>This is borderline bigotry.

I was wondering what these "<i>gleaming white, with dark-tinted windows, like limousines, and some days I think of them as the spaceships on which our alien overlords have landed to rule over us.</i>" actually looked like:<p>[0] <a href="http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ip2ku-copy.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ip2ku-c...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_0039-copy.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://sfcitizen.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/IMG_003...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://missionlocal.org/wp-content/themes/calpress/library/extensions/timthumb.php?src=http://missionlocal.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/IMG_2133.jpg&#38;w=620" rel="nofollow">http://missionlocal.org/wp-content/themes/calpress/library/e...</a>

&#62; but the passengers were tech people, so withdrawn from direct, abrupt, interventionary communications...<p>Not sure this writer has actually had to deal with many "tech people".

Interesting point about public transportation -- by creating a private bus system, tech companies are actively suppressing demand for better public transport between SF and the valley.

I think the piece illustrates a very good point that the general public would enjoy reading about. Which is that booms can push out diversity and that a tragedy of the commons is occurring in SF with people driving out the character they came to SF to experience.<p>The problem is that:<p>a) It's taking about <i>us</i>. People who are not software developers would brush past the descriptions of developers as mere scene setting. But it's rather insulting to those being described. b) If it is true, it makes us the villains. And we don't like being the villains. We believe our motives and actions are reasonably noble (or at least not harmful). It hurts to be told that their not. c) It's colored with a lot of emotion from the author. I get the sense that this is precipitated by an underlying feeling of: "Does my time in SF mean NOTHING!?" Which is a reasonable emotion, but comes across to the subjects (us) as a sense of superiority.<p>I believe that it conveys it's point much better to a "lay" audience than it does to us because we (rightly) get lost in the details.<p>I'm very luck that I like what I like and that what I like is the "hot" industry right now. I do want to remember that everything isn't roses and sunshine. That this boom does have losers. But I'm still moving to SF because that's where the place I want to work is and because I like the city. And screw you Rebecca Solnit for making me feel like I don't belong. You were new to SF once and you don't have that right. But I might just take the train instead of a shuttle.

For further reading on the geography and political economy of California, I strongly suggest Mike Davis' City of Quartz, which is a series of essays about LA:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Angeles-Edition/dp/1844675688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&#38;qid=1360355406&#38;sr=8-1&#38;keywords=city+of+quartz" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/City-Quartz-Excavating-Angeles-Edition...</a><p>Warning for HN readers: the book is written in the same critical and class conscious vein as this article, so you may not like it.

Someone doesn't like young people who work in tech.

Man, people in the tech bubble really don't like being reminded that everything their industry does and the effect it has had on an established community isn't all perfect. This doesn't surprise me in my (anecdotal) experience in the industry I've run into a lot of "those are problems caused by other industries, not us", but the author raises some good points about the effects of booms (and particularly this one) on the people who were established prior but not part of it. Some can't be avoided but some can be mitigated - and some people have been less defensive here and offered some solutions to things like public transport and housing.

The article mentions ways the gold rush was bad.<p>The article mentions ways the tech boom is like the gold rush.<p>But the first set of ways does not intersect the second set.<p>I also found it ironic that the old "Yankee Go Home" sentiment was being expressed by an expat.

<i>The whole of the US sometimes seems to be a checkerboard of these low-pressure zones with lots of time and space but no money, and the boomtowns with lots of money, a frenzied pace and chronic housing scarcity. Neither version is very liveable.</i><p>After taking a few extended cross country road trips over the past couple of years, this sentence from the article rang the most true.

This article raises interesting observations. I find it fascinating to see how technology might be perceived as a distant animal. The tech industry, like most schools of thought, regularly faces the danger of becoming an Ivory tower, disconnected from the real-world. After all, technology bubbles hurt us all in the past. Similarly, technology is hard to understand, it is magical in a way, an alien tool. If you work in tech, don't be offended. Solnit is not claiming an absolute truth. She's raising awareness of potential collateral damage by tech companies.

Public transit, even in the densest of American cities, is a money loser and often pollutes more than if the riders were taking cars. It's badly in need of innovation and revolution.<p>Fixed-route transit is a mess. That's why I can't <i>wait</i> until we have self-driving cars. Most public transit would die on the vine as cars, which typically are utilized perhaps 10% of the day, can increase toward 100% utilization. No more need for inefficient and inconvenient fixed routes and no more need for giant empty buses riding around during non-peak hours.

I've been looking at homes recently and it just depresses the hell out of me.<p>I'm not in my twenties anymore, don't work for the googles etc. although I have a relatively good tech job.<p>A semi decent house on the peninsula is coming in around 1 mil. And that's often for much less than 2000sq feet.<p>And this is for a house that has doubled in value since 1999. Afaik, salary increases are nowhere near that and certainly not mine.

If housing is so expensive why the hell aren't they building more?<p>Lumber(or brick) doesn't cost more in California.<p>It's not a lack of capital. Interest rates are extremely low thanks to the fed.<p>It can't be a lack of labor. I personally know several carpenters and electricians who would happy to work in California for 6 months building apartments. I don't think my experience is that unusual.<p>What is going on?

Not much about bus but other problems in city like rent and housing that we already know about.

What a truly terrible article, how on earth did it get published? This is the type of small minded, stereotyping, garbage that should never make it past some hack's crappy blog.<p>I looked up the author on Wikipedia and I find it rather ironic that there are quotes of her priding herself on her critical thinking abilities. Reading the article, I saw very little evidence of critical thinking or thinking of any kind for that matter.<p>As a side note, I see that she has a Masters of Journalism. Why on earth would you need a masters degree in Journalism? Find a story, research it/fact check, write about it. Do you really need to go to a university for 6~ years for that?

A pretty resentful and bitter piece by someone who seems to feel personally wronged by an industry he is clearly not a part of, but feels above on a moral and personal level.

TLDR

I'm not really buying it...