Thought provoking and insightful. America has distinctive scale in the modern historical era, so it's useful as a sort of easily visible signal / bellwether (as noted), but it's also not at all an island. I wanted the lens to be widened just a bit to take into account the rest of the world system: specifically, how what happens in / with the US is heavily influenced by what's happening elsewhere in the global economic / social / technical landscape. Those transition moments - the American Revolution, the Civil War, New Deal Era, etc. - were very global events, shaped directly (and sometimes primarily) by what was happening elsewhere.
Good points and well taken. The lack of reflecting on the global dimensions was really more of a constraint of space. The original piece was quite a bit longer, and we had to tighten it down to what you saw. But I have explored this in my Substack series in various ways, including in the essay linked below that takes a look around the world and talks about where we humans on earth would want to see AI be initially developed given our current options. I make the case that we do want this to happen in the US, which is where the front lip is right now. Aside from that piece, I do think that a global audience should focus on what is happening in the US now because it still is the 800-pound gorilla that will play a big part in what is coming. And Trump is distorting where America actually is, and for sure where it actually is going. Hence this piece in Exponential View.
Thanks for the sharp take—your framing of Trump as a wrecking ball really lands. But I have to push back on the Bay Area worldview that forever casts itself as both the center and the future. Tech folks love to assume they can outguess history, yet somehow miss the messy reality of humans and the systems we’ve built. That’s why the “Third Life / metaverse revolution” fizzled everywhere outside a few screen-addicted circles on the Peninsula. And while it’s fun to dunk on legacy institutions, dismantling them in favor of hype-y quick fixes (UBI, etc.) forgets that governments move slowly because society needs them to. Most people can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be forced to adopt change at the pace a technologist would prefer.
Which makes me genuinely curious: what are Bay thinkers and builders actually doing when it comes to reimagining systems that don’t—or shouldn’t—have a clear monetisation path, like law, order, and justice? Education, health, and housing have already been warped into profit engines when they should be treated as rights. So beyond philanthropy, how does the Valley envision transforming these foundational parts of society?
I think the people in the Bay Area who are in the tech and innovation economy are much more thoughtful about the larger societal impacts of the new technologies of the region than people outside the region give them credit for. And this has been the case since I have been here since the early internet days. I think what has changed that perception in the outside world has been the dramatic scaling of these tech companies into trillion dollar companies due to the global nature of the internet on which they were all designed to thrive. The unprecedented scale of the wealth creation is what flipped the script so fast. People just freaked out at seeing that kind of wealth accrue so fast and the related power that comes from that wealth.
For sure there are bad actors in the tech world, particularly at the highest reaches, and they fit the stereotype. And there were some unintended consequences that few of us saw coming. But I would still argue that there is a lot of idealism within these same big tech companies in many people who work within them. And the startup scene still often focuses on mission and impact as much as making money. And San Francisco is attracting people not just in the tech world per se but in the broader innovation world whose careers will be made on how to make the most of this tech. Intellectuals, academics, strategists, people working in think tanks.
Pretty much every night in San Francisco there are many salons, and meetups and parties where the conversations are not about how to make more money but how to change the world in more positive ways. Really. I go to many of these. My events that I host and convene on these big-picture, societal topics are jammed with waiting lists. We don't ever talk about the money side of things. And I'm just one of many, many event series like this. The link below is the kickoff talk to 250 of those kind of people who came to the kickoff to my most recent event series that takes the same name as my Substack series: The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050.
Thank you, thought provoking and insightful. It reminded me of Joshua Cooper Ramo’s book, The Seventh Sense.
In particular, his observation that a new caste of figures, who dominate and control many systems we depend upon - a mainly young, technically savvy group. The nation's, companies, terror groups, etc, who train and equip them best will have an incalculable advantage.
The group's newness is their greatest advantage, but also greatest danger. As much as they may know about networks; they don't know about history, politics and philosophy.
8 years after writing his book, the reality of the destruction has accelerated; but what will be constructed is still to be determined.
Thanks for the reference on the book, which I just grabbed on Kindle. A lot of my work in my Substack series, and eventual book by HarperCollins, is trying to address the issue you point out. The AI tech is here and not going to slow down and go away. I have spent 30 years in San Francisco and know a lot of those young tech folks. They are well-meaning, and mostly have good values, but they really are not skilled in the ways of history, politics and philosophy, as you say.
I do think that most people outside Silicon Valley assume that these young techies want to dominate all those other systems and make insane amounts of money on the way. I don't find that. I really don't. I think a sizable majority would be fine with working within different economic and social systems designed to make these technologies like AI work better for as many people as possible. There is a disconnect from what I see inside that world and what people outside that world assume. I'm trying to bridge that gap through my series here: https://peterleyden.substack.com
"California has often been America’s future; it is playing that role again. The story unfolding here is largely missed by outsiders, especially the media on the East Coast and in Europe. In Washington, the Old World is fighting for its survival through the very figure tearing it down: Trump. But while attention is fixed on this spectacle of destruction, the next story – one of reinvention – is already emerging in San Francisco. If you want to see the future of America, there is only one place to look."
Az, benchmark these for future back checking.
One aspect of the entrenched old guard stalwarts of "how things have always been" is their individual and collective inability to discern noise from signal; applied here - to be objective and non-judgmental in the assessment and prognostications. Not that we need to go back to the tour the steel mills, or if they are well, the slave shacks in the Mississippi bottoms, or the So Cal leadership in electronics and aviation graveyards. As each of this is in a geographic region which enjoyed a piece of the industrial / tech evolution which has us arriving "here" - today.
The center of the tech world has abandoned the State economies which are NOT PROGRESSIVE in their public and private sector management philosophies; ie: Cal vs Tx on taxes, regs, etc, etc, etc....Az? Fla? and revitalizing is taking place in the mid west - KY, Ill, Tenn, etc.
No, California is in a fight for it's survival. Loss of tax base, lacking public service focus government actors, high housing, high cost of living, etc, etc...
In a tip of the hat, YES, IF, cali is going to re-join the Republic (more capitalist than communist or socialist) , it's 100% guaranteed the innovators will have generated 1000s of new co's, 100000 of new jobs, gen mountains of cash, and if this model, creates a long succession of successful companies who can overcome the anti-business reg/obstacles who give Cali a chance at survival before descending into round 2 of the SF Zombie Apocalypse of the 2020-2024 Error.
FYI, those thin apps and programs which are appearing in spades now, all over SilValley, much like the skyscraper ad firms, and html design houses, (and buggy whip mfgs...:) ) that's not going to get it done. It'll be robotics, drones, etc, etc, and these mfg's will NOT be located in Cali. There in lies the impossible to fix Cali issue.
You seem to have bought the story from the pandemic era that everyone in tech has left California. That is not true and was far from the truth even at the time. The only companies of real innovative consequence that you list are Elon's Tesla and SpaceX, and the brains of both operations are still in California, just the corporate headquarters relocated for tax reasons.
There was a shift of Millennial Generation workers who did head to Austin and Miami and comparable cities in the pandemic for cheaper housing to work remote. But most of those were the B team of backend workers. And now anyone who wants any piece of AI has abandoned those places and are sheepishly back in San Francisco.
California is "tougher" to do business in than Texas but that is mostly because our leaders are genuinely trying to harness the booming economy of tech in order to make the society work better for others outside that world. Some of the difficulty is genuine 20th century bureaucratic stasis that for sure needs big reform. But the higher taxes are for moving the wealth through society much like governments in Europe try to do so.
California has a long way to go, and so my remarks of what is emerging in California are not about a resuscitation of what California has come to be over the last 80 years since the last fundamental reinvention, which they also led through that entire era.
We're starting a new 21st-century reinvention and I expect we will see the broad outlines again appear in California first.
You know, you are correct. An early assessment of the "how" and "If vs when" California retools their governing structure of "largess" and "free" is definitely premature on my part.
There are multiple issues which are unresolved as 'solutions which must change the course of public and private leadership" from the present collective favoring elites to one which more or less conforms to effectively and efficiently provide THE basic government services. We are 180 here.
In other words, the social fabric, the infrastructure is dying or dead - schools, pub services, education, roads, water, fire/pol svcs, taxes, regulation and the legal system which operates independently of the Constitution.
That won't last. The state is broke...
I'll chk back when we see those "broad outlines"...
Thought provoking and insightful. America has distinctive scale in the modern historical era, so it's useful as a sort of easily visible signal / bellwether (as noted), but it's also not at all an island. I wanted the lens to be widened just a bit to take into account the rest of the world system: specifically, how what happens in / with the US is heavily influenced by what's happening elsewhere in the global economic / social / technical landscape. Those transition moments - the American Revolution, the Civil War, New Deal Era, etc. - were very global events, shaped directly (and sometimes primarily) by what was happening elsewhere.
Good points and well taken. The lack of reflecting on the global dimensions was really more of a constraint of space. The original piece was quite a bit longer, and we had to tighten it down to what you saw. But I have explored this in my Substack series in various ways, including in the essay linked below that takes a look around the world and talks about where we humans on earth would want to see AI be initially developed given our current options. I make the case that we do want this to happen in the US, which is where the front lip is right now. Aside from that piece, I do think that a global audience should focus on what is happening in the US now because it still is the 800-pound gorilla that will play a big part in what is coming. And Trump is distorting where America actually is, and for sure where it actually is going. Hence this piece in Exponential View.
https://peterleyden.substack.com/p/the-next-great-american-mission-invent
Thanks for the sharp take—your framing of Trump as a wrecking ball really lands. But I have to push back on the Bay Area worldview that forever casts itself as both the center and the future. Tech folks love to assume they can outguess history, yet somehow miss the messy reality of humans and the systems we’ve built. That’s why the “Third Life / metaverse revolution” fizzled everywhere outside a few screen-addicted circles on the Peninsula. And while it’s fun to dunk on legacy institutions, dismantling them in favor of hype-y quick fixes (UBI, etc.) forgets that governments move slowly because society needs them to. Most people can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t be forced to adopt change at the pace a technologist would prefer.
Which makes me genuinely curious: what are Bay thinkers and builders actually doing when it comes to reimagining systems that don’t—or shouldn’t—have a clear monetisation path, like law, order, and justice? Education, health, and housing have already been warped into profit engines when they should be treated as rights. So beyond philanthropy, how does the Valley envision transforming these foundational parts of society?
I think the people in the Bay Area who are in the tech and innovation economy are much more thoughtful about the larger societal impacts of the new technologies of the region than people outside the region give them credit for. And this has been the case since I have been here since the early internet days. I think what has changed that perception in the outside world has been the dramatic scaling of these tech companies into trillion dollar companies due to the global nature of the internet on which they were all designed to thrive. The unprecedented scale of the wealth creation is what flipped the script so fast. People just freaked out at seeing that kind of wealth accrue so fast and the related power that comes from that wealth.
For sure there are bad actors in the tech world, particularly at the highest reaches, and they fit the stereotype. And there were some unintended consequences that few of us saw coming. But I would still argue that there is a lot of idealism within these same big tech companies in many people who work within them. And the startup scene still often focuses on mission and impact as much as making money. And San Francisco is attracting people not just in the tech world per se but in the broader innovation world whose careers will be made on how to make the most of this tech. Intellectuals, academics, strategists, people working in think tanks.
Pretty much every night in San Francisco there are many salons, and meetups and parties where the conversations are not about how to make more money but how to change the world in more positive ways. Really. I go to many of these. My events that I host and convene on these big-picture, societal topics are jammed with waiting lists. We don't ever talk about the money side of things. And I'm just one of many, many event series like this. The link below is the kickoff talk to 250 of those kind of people who came to the kickoff to my most recent event series that takes the same name as my Substack series: The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050.
https://peterleyden.substack.com/p/a-call-for-the-a-team-to-come-together
Thank you, thought provoking and insightful. It reminded me of Joshua Cooper Ramo’s book, The Seventh Sense.
In particular, his observation that a new caste of figures, who dominate and control many systems we depend upon - a mainly young, technically savvy group. The nation's, companies, terror groups, etc, who train and equip them best will have an incalculable advantage.
The group's newness is their greatest advantage, but also greatest danger. As much as they may know about networks; they don't know about history, politics and philosophy.
8 years after writing his book, the reality of the destruction has accelerated; but what will be constructed is still to be determined.
Thanks for the reference on the book, which I just grabbed on Kindle. A lot of my work in my Substack series, and eventual book by HarperCollins, is trying to address the issue you point out. The AI tech is here and not going to slow down and go away. I have spent 30 years in San Francisco and know a lot of those young tech folks. They are well-meaning, and mostly have good values, but they really are not skilled in the ways of history, politics and philosophy, as you say.
I do think that most people outside Silicon Valley assume that these young techies want to dominate all those other systems and make insane amounts of money on the way. I don't find that. I really don't. I think a sizable majority would be fine with working within different economic and social systems designed to make these technologies like AI work better for as many people as possible. There is a disconnect from what I see inside that world and what people outside that world assume. I'm trying to bridge that gap through my series here: https://peterleyden.substack.com
peter rocks!
"California has often been America’s future; it is playing that role again. The story unfolding here is largely missed by outsiders, especially the media on the East Coast and in Europe. In Washington, the Old World is fighting for its survival through the very figure tearing it down: Trump. But while attention is fixed on this spectacle of destruction, the next story – one of reinvention – is already emerging in San Francisco. If you want to see the future of America, there is only one place to look."
Az, benchmark these for future back checking.
One aspect of the entrenched old guard stalwarts of "how things have always been" is their individual and collective inability to discern noise from signal; applied here - to be objective and non-judgmental in the assessment and prognostications. Not that we need to go back to the tour the steel mills, or if they are well, the slave shacks in the Mississippi bottoms, or the So Cal leadership in electronics and aviation graveyards. As each of this is in a geographic region which enjoyed a piece of the industrial / tech evolution which has us arriving "here" - today.
The center of the tech world has abandoned the State economies which are NOT PROGRESSIVE in their public and private sector management philosophies; ie: Cal vs Tx on taxes, regs, etc, etc, etc....Az? Fla? and revitalizing is taking place in the mid west - KY, Ill, Tenn, etc.
No, California is in a fight for it's survival. Loss of tax base, lacking public service focus government actors, high housing, high cost of living, etc, etc...
In a tip of the hat, YES, IF, cali is going to re-join the Republic (more capitalist than communist or socialist) , it's 100% guaranteed the innovators will have generated 1000s of new co's, 100000 of new jobs, gen mountains of cash, and if this model, creates a long succession of successful companies who can overcome the anti-business reg/obstacles who give Cali a chance at survival before descending into round 2 of the SF Zombie Apocalypse of the 2020-2024 Error.
FYI, those thin apps and programs which are appearing in spades now, all over SilValley, much like the skyscraper ad firms, and html design houses, (and buggy whip mfgs...:) ) that's not going to get it done. It'll be robotics, drones, etc, etc, and these mfg's will NOT be located in Cali. There in lies the impossible to fix Cali issue.
The horse has left the barn....
Elon has left the barn...
Lonsdale has left the barn...
Chevron,
Tesla,
SpaceX,
Oracle,
Mckesson...
IN-and-OUT... :)
That's my take.
You seem to have bought the story from the pandemic era that everyone in tech has left California. That is not true and was far from the truth even at the time. The only companies of real innovative consequence that you list are Elon's Tesla and SpaceX, and the brains of both operations are still in California, just the corporate headquarters relocated for tax reasons.
There was a shift of Millennial Generation workers who did head to Austin and Miami and comparable cities in the pandemic for cheaper housing to work remote. But most of those were the B team of backend workers. And now anyone who wants any piece of AI has abandoned those places and are sheepishly back in San Francisco.
California is "tougher" to do business in than Texas but that is mostly because our leaders are genuinely trying to harness the booming economy of tech in order to make the society work better for others outside that world. Some of the difficulty is genuine 20th century bureaucratic stasis that for sure needs big reform. But the higher taxes are for moving the wealth through society much like governments in Europe try to do so.
California has a long way to go, and so my remarks of what is emerging in California are not about a resuscitation of what California has come to be over the last 80 years since the last fundamental reinvention, which they also led through that entire era.
We're starting a new 21st-century reinvention and I expect we will see the broad outlines again appear in California first.
:)
You know, you are correct. An early assessment of the "how" and "If vs when" California retools their governing structure of "largess" and "free" is definitely premature on my part.
There are multiple issues which are unresolved as 'solutions which must change the course of public and private leadership" from the present collective favoring elites to one which more or less conforms to effectively and efficiently provide THE basic government services. We are 180 here.
In other words, the social fabric, the infrastructure is dying or dead - schools, pub services, education, roads, water, fire/pol svcs, taxes, regulation and the legal system which operates independently of the Constitution.
That won't last. The state is broke...
I'll chk back when we see those "broad outlines"...
Me...I'm shorting Cali.