From this valley they say you are going

[supergee]

Continuing discussion of whether Silicon Valley is the Great Satan

Thanx to Slate Star Codex

Comments

[arlie]

That was interesting. However, I find myself uncertain whether it's accurate, or just someone competently using debate skills.

The problem from where I sit is the definition of "useless". And the elephant in the room is all the tech companies devoted to violating privacy and selling spam delivery services. IMNSHO, advertising is a better example than juicero. Most Americans are inured to it, and just don't see the wrongness. But I see billions invested into attempting to convice people - most of whom are precariously employed (or unemployed) - to spend money on things that (in the apparant opinion of the advertisers) it would otherwise not have occurred to them to buy. Exhibit A in this category is google, with its no longer new unofficial replacement motto "do be evil".

Related to this, though less evil, we have a large number of tech companies devoted to helping other companies save money by imposing externalities on customers - by wasting those customers' time. The prime example of this is "press 1 to listen to advertising spam; press 2 to be disconnnected" etc. I wish that was the only example.