“I still want to see an independent tech weblog that covers the many startups and subjects I never see listed on the current tech blogs. I hate seeing a glowing post about some new startup and know the writer and CEO regularly joke with each other on Twitter. I hate when a popular startup is given a pass because most of the writers attended the founder’s bachelor party or got an exclusive on a new feature. This is the game that goes on and the righteous belief that there isn’t one bothers me.
The “Oh, we simply don’t get Washington/Wall Street/the Establishment because we’re such an enlightened, transparent meritocracy out here” narrative is one of the aspects of Silicon Valley’s self image I’ve always found least convincing. The valley has power networks every bit as influential and insular as the older centers of the American elite and in many cases those networks play as much a part in the success of a company as the more altruistic triumphs of execution that we laud on glib startup advice blogs. Lamenting that is a bit like lamenting that there’s no Santa Claus, but, as Andre points out, it mainly bothers me that people try to pretend that the tech industry is somehow more fundamentally enlightened than the rest of human society.
