We've totally altered our information environment in something like 30 years. Less than an average lifespan. On the back of that anyone remotely competent and well wishing in technology was immediately supplanted by those who worship venal money-grubbing.

Title should be Silicon Valley Has an Empathy Vacuum (2016), at the time:

flagged (85 points, 136 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13055427

(49 points, 16 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057589

I went in ready to laugh at this article because it's The New Yorker casting stones about empathy vacuum, but it was actually good. Dunno if I buy the connection to Donald Trump's 2016 win, but it's refreshing to hear this explanation instead of stuff like "Facebook helped him win," the author was really empathetic.

It always bugs me when “Silicon Valley” is written about as some kind of monolith.

Do all the sincere, hard-working, risk-taking startups deserve to be painted by the same brush as Facebook?

> Globalization is a proxy for technology-powered capitalism, which tends to reward fewer and fewer members of society.

This is just false. The growth of income inequality does not diminish the clear global trend of increased median income and consumption.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=l...