This site is good and well done considering how opaque the financing involved is.
Replies:
1
Boosts:
2
People ask how an unprofitable industry can attract so much investment. I think this, from Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker, helps answer:
"Venture capital looks at valuations and growth, not necessarily at profit or revenue. So you don’t actually have to invest in technology that works, or that even makes a profit, you simply have to have a narrative that is compelling enough to float those valuations. So you see this repetitive and exhausting hype cycle as a feature in this industry. A couple of years ago, you would have been asking me about the metaverse, then last year, you would have asked me about Web3 and crypto, and for each of these inflection points there’s an Andreessen Horowitz manifesto."
"It’s not simply that one piece of technology is overhyped, it’s that hype is a necessary ingredient of the current business ecosystem of the tech industry. We should examine how often the financial incentive for hype is rewarded without any real social returns, without any meaningful progress in technology, without these tools and services and worlds ever actually manifesting. That’s key to understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world."
— Meredith Whittaker, Signal CEO, to Derek Robertson. "5 Questions for Meredith Whittaker". Politico, 2023-12-01.
www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2023/12/01/5-questions-for-meredith-whittaker-00129677
