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Comment by cbracy | Hacker News Reader

I think you're misunderstanding. I think it's exactly that decentralized, networked approach to problem-solving that holds the potential for technologists to fix big problems. The issue is that in SV most are not focusing on those problems. I WANT the tech community disrupting those old institutions, and I'm frustrated we're not doing more of it.

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I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I think one issue is actually Silicon Valley's model of "disruption" — ie new solutions replace old ones. For example, instead of fixing public transit in San Francisco (or SF -> SV) we now have all of these new private infrastructures for transit within SF (Uber, Lyft, Cabulous, etc) and SF -> SV (all those shuttles, see: http://stamen.com/zero1/).

What happens then is that the people with apps, the people with jobs at Google, Apple, Facebook, live in a completely different urban landscape than ones who aren't in the ecosystem. When we can't see the problems of MUNI we don't feel them, and when they aren't problems for us we won't feel like fixing them. I'd love for us to have more of a civic sense as well, vs this complicated and classed (but faster to build!) layering of private infrastructures.

Completely 100% agree with you, and have been mildly obsessed with Uber and other ride-sharing apps since I moved here because of their conflict with city government and the implications they have for public transportation.

One of the most jarring San Francisco experiences I had when I first got here was getting off Mission/16th BART and then walking a block to Valencia street. The difference that block makes is a good metaphor for what I'm trying to describe in this article, but I'm not creative or articulate enough to describe it in this context and have it make sense.

Of course, that sort of extreme income gradient exists in a lot of cities, and predates any one particular industry -- try walking south from the University of Chicago buildings to 63rd street to see a non-SF example.

The Technologists have built themselves the equivalent of a new wild west which is still being explored and built upon. I don't think they're very interested in doing the equivalent of sailing back to England to try and reform the British parliament.

To extend the analogy, expanding to the wild west eventually required a revolutionary war with Great Britian. That's a war Silicon Valley is woefully unprepared for.

I absolutely agree. I love the Silicon Valley mindset. But I despair at how inward-facing it is. When I read about pockets of SV culture popping up in other places I cheer, such as an article the other day about a hacker culture forming in Kenya. Those hackers are applying this wonderful decentralized way of solving problems to high-priority problems in the world. In California, we are so far up Maslow's hierarchy of needs that the "problems" we try to address are mostly comical (e.g. I have too many social networks! I need an app to help me browse them).

Well written. This is you?

Catherine Bracy

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/cbracy

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/catherine-bracy/19/84b/350

You might want to include an "about" page on your tumblr it's nice to know who is saying what and I had to follow some links to find the above.

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