This time is different. Because this time there's not fear of a tech bubble, but hope for one, and with it, hope that the bubble bursts and Silicon Valley gets taken down a peg or two.
Vanity Fair got the ball rolling recently, offering up a sneering indictment of Silicon Valley:
Off in the distance, you could make out the faint purr of Bentleys and Teslas ferrying along Sand Hill Road, depositing the Valley’s other top V.C.’s at their respective offices—Greylock Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Sequoia Capital, to name just a few—for another day of meetings with founders, reviewing the decks of new start-ups, and searching for the next can’t-miss company.
The article’s derisive haves versus have nots viewpoint, pitting Silicon Valley against the rest of the country, is all the more surprising considering that the previous tech bubble wiped out $6 trillion in value from the nation’s economy, harming millions of people, thousands of companies. Yet the author, Nick Bilton, doesn't see their pain only the Valley’s ”debauched culture.”
Programmers have their own agents, much like Hollywood stars. Some interns have been paid more than $7,000 a month.
Shouldn't such success be celebrated? Apparently not.
Bilton is not an outlier. Fortune magazine is positively gaga to witness "unicorn tears." The magazine even instructs its readers on how to appropriately mock those taken down by the bursting of this prophesied tech bubble:
A company called Firebox is selling a gin liqueur called Unicorn Tears. A bottle costs $62.29 and features flecks of silver.
It gets worse.
These days, no tech news may be viewed as good news. For example, Uber just announced it was buying the vacant Sears building in downtown Oakland. The company plans to move at least 2,000 high-paid employees into the space by 2017, following a costly refurbishment. Great news, right? Wrong! As USA Today reports, the announcement was met with as much scorn as delight:
I think it would be crazy not to have a little bit of fear and skepticism.
Uber has a certain reputation and it's frankly not a reputation that seems to mesh well with Oakland's culture.
Would the sentiment have been similar if instead of a tech giant moving into that empty Sears building, it was, say, a big insurance company? A healthcare provider? As the San Francisco Chronicle insisted, "many won't welcome the company."
The anti-tech, pro-bubble-bursting bias is not only found in the general press. Techcrunch, a website long known for promoting all-things Silicon Valley, is likewise deeply suspicious of what it views as so much "tech bros" voodoo:
Lying is inevitable in our industry – it’s unbelievable that founders can take a company from a few users to billions, and yet, it happens. Without a fake veneer of confidence, no sales would get done, and we would still be stuck with the tech of the 1970s.
When the bubble bursts, they'll get theirs. That's become the prevailing attitude.
Consider that no city has benefitted more from the rise of tech than San Francisco, happily perched on the outskirts of Silicon Valley. Yet even local site SFist is eager to see all the "techies" get "humbled."
Perhaps the biggest impact, for many, will be emotional, and will be a notch in the adult-experience belts of many young people earning big salaries that may not be sustainable in a "corrected" market.
Make no mistake. This isn't about whacky valuations. These publications aren't expressing doubts over a start-up's long-term potential. Rather, they appear to be actively hoping for a tech bubble to burst.
Given the 'Silicon Valley is a big fat lie' consensus, it's probably no surprise that Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, has produced a documentary decrying the "colonizing" impact of Silicon Valley.
Spoiler alert: in 2015, there are no good colonials.
The question then is why? Why are so many hoping for a bubble to burst? Why is this conviction given such credence in the media?
The answer is fear.
Fear that the wondrous benefits of technology will flow mostly to a few -- despite ample evidence to the contrary. Fear that tech giants like
Fear that well-funded start-ups, backed by a tiny few, will suck out the profits of every industry -- and remake local, state and federal rules that have existed for decades.
It does not matter if these fears are overstated, or just plain wrong. The fear is real. People need a breather, a time-out to right themselves as everything about them changes. An earth-shattering kaboom across the tech sector could provide exactly that.
