I really enjoy John Markoff's writing and happened to read that article before this was posted. If you really want to understand more of where he is coming from with respect to this article I would recommend reading his book "What the dormouse said". If you look at some of his comments in the article, like this one
"What worries me about the future of Silicon Valley, is that one-dimensionality, that it's not a Renaissance culture, it's an engineering culture. It's an engineering culture that believes that it's revolutionary, but it's actually not that revolutionary. The Valley has, for a long time, mined a couple of big ideas."
You can really see how he is referring to the some of the earlier generation that was more influenced by the 60's counterculture movement. For myself I'm not so sure, because I think there is a danger in being nostalgic when comparing the accomplishments of the past with today. But again I think he's a great writer and I loved the quote from Kahneman about "the robots are going to come just in time"
I've thought this for years. Basically SV is still just mining the stuff that came out of SRI/Engelbart and PARC. There has been very little fundamental innovation (a.k.a. invention) since then, and we don't have a fundamental innovation culture. We have an incremental advance culture -- basically just massaging and refining old stuff.
Any businessperson would estranged by the negative attitude towards making "the stuff that came out of SRI/Engelbart and PARC" available to millions if not billions of people, which, one could argue, is the more difficult part.
"What worries me about the future of Silicon Valley, is that one-dimensionality, that it's not a Renaissance culture, it's an engineering culture. It's an engineering culture that believes that it's revolutionary, but it's actually not that revolutionary. The Valley has, for a long time, mined a couple of big ideas."
You can really see how he is referring to the some of the earlier generation that was more influenced by the 60's counterculture movement. For myself I'm not so sure, because I think there is a danger in being nostalgic when comparing the accomplishments of the past with today. But again I think he's a great writer and I loved the quote from Kahneman about "the robots are going to come just in time"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said