this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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I have this semi-formed idea that there is an optimism bubble growing in certain tech disciplines. My usual lane is design and "front end" stuff but I think what you're scratching at here fits in there too.
When I say "optimism bubble" I'm referring to the mistaken conflation of "technology" and "products" and how that leads to this warped perception of virtue because technology, not products, is lazily considered representative of progress.
What does this person mean, I ask facetiously, by "opportunity" and "generational companies"? Are they referring to the chance of being an agent of positive impact on the world or are they talking about the chance to be on the cover of Forbes?
If they are talking about being on the cover of Forbes, what do they think OpenAI is? A technology or a product company? If they want to make a positive impact on the world, what does the 2-3 year window represent?
Edit: forgot to tie up the bubble stuff
The bubble bursts when everyone learns the wrestling is fake, so to speak.
Or the bubble bursts when everyone gets exhausted from pretending the wrestling is real, so to speak.
More pessimistically i'd call it the "hype train", a bubble promises an eventual pop. What usually happens is people on masse moving the newer and shinier model, apparently afflicted with amnesia about their previous buzz words.
I'd say it's the cancerous influence of VC funding, the grift gets the dough.
I agrée for VCs but what I forgot to say was I don’t really give a fuck about them. I’m thinking more about the people who work for them. The collective despair in the UX community is palpable as they divide into the ones who accept that they are glorified marketers and the ones who know that’s not what they signed up for
I have developer co-workers who play the role very convincingly ^^, especially for the LLM hype, and I remember more than one tech conference attending evangelizer (to be fair sometimes the tools or practices are actually good).
What’s the focus of UX despair these days? I haven’t touched frontend design or implementation for a long while now.
ahah! you fell into my little trap. It's not spam if you ask for it! haha
I wrote about it recently here https://fasterandworse.com/the-aura-of-care/
The summary explanation is that UX design/research has developed, over a long period, a posture of being the empathetic discipline that cares about people and exists to serve their needs - which is only compatible with capitalism as long as serving people's needs results in a higher return for the business.
Sorry, not a very eloquent summary this early in the morning...