The entire country has incentivized its top minds to developing ad tech bullshit. Like literally our astrophysicists are working at Stitch Fix instead of doing astrophysics.
Four years later, Moody works for Stitch Fix too. He belongs to a growing group of astrophysicist deserters, who have stopped researching the cosmos to start building recommendation algorithms and data models for the tech industry. They make up the data science teams at companies like Netflix and Spotify and Google.
[…]
The decision to leave academia came down to a few factors: The pay was certainly better, and the jobs were more plentiful. “There’s a bottleneck of getting into tenure-track positions,” he says. And being in the Bay Area meant he and his wife—who is also an astrophysicist—would never have to worry about both finding jobs. But the real surprise, he says, was that the work in tech companies was actually interesting. At Beats, he says, he found “like-minded people who were working on problems that didn’t take away the intellectual high.” Same math, different application.
If that’s not an alarm that screams for science funding, I don’t know what is.
Productive innovation ceases the moment growth has reached its peak. It is then replaced by counterproductive “innovation”, such as finding new ways to nickel and dime your customers, reduction in quality or dismissal of employees. All in the name of simulating “growth” to please the shareholders.
Don’t forget the super fun B2B market where one business overcharges another business to outsource functions that really should be done in-house so then businesses can talk about “the cost of doing business increasing” when really it’s that they have purchased too many services and those services are all at various states of enshitification
So like video games, cars, slap bracelets, chicken fries, winnebegos, movies, music, none of that’s “innovation” under capitalism? Just the antisocial types? Nobody’s come up with anything interesting under capitalism?
Most of those things were products of earlier times, when our economic system and industries were more regulated and had a larger number of competitive entities. “Innovation” now is just more cupholders in the RV to put your chicken fries in. All flash, no substance. Everything is an AI wearable tacked on to something else we’ve already had for years.
EV battery tech, there’s some decent work being done there. A few other niche cases like that. But the rest is one big fucking con game. It’s all a race to find out how much money you can gouge out of people before the system just breaks.
I feel that the majority of innovation occuring in modern capitalism is confined to two key areas:
Regulatory capture and market control.
New ways to mindfuck people into overpaying for goods and services.
The entire country has incentivized its top minds to developing ad tech bullshit. Like literally our astrophysicists are working at Stitch Fix instead of doing astrophysics.
I help setup ad placement TVs for resort style businesses.
Studied theoretical astrophysics and astro xenobiology as a double advanced major…
My boss used to brag he managed to get the astronaut in his team so, I am useful for facts and puzzles.
God I hate my existence.
I’m honestly here wondering if this is some guerilla marketing for Stitch Fix or if there’s some more story to this.
Oh, no. They’re fast fashion, right? That can’t be great for the environment.
Article is here, kinda interesting in a depressing sort of way: https://archive.is/E0NWk
Thanks for sharing.
If that’s not an alarm that screams for science funding, I don’t know what is.
Productive innovation ceases the moment growth has reached its peak. It is then replaced by counterproductive “innovation”, such as finding new ways to nickel and dime your customers, reduction in quality or dismissal of employees. All in the name of simulating “growth” to please the shareholders.
Don’t forget the super fun B2B market where one business overcharges another business to outsource functions that really should be done in-house so then businesses can talk about “the cost of doing business increasing” when really it’s that they have purchased too many services and those services are all at various states of enshitification
So like video games, cars, slap bracelets, chicken fries, winnebegos, movies, music, none of that’s “innovation” under capitalism? Just the antisocial types? Nobody’s come up with anything interesting under capitalism?
Most of those things were products of earlier times, when our economic system and industries were more regulated and had a larger number of competitive entities. “Innovation” now is just more cupholders in the RV to put your chicken fries in. All flash, no substance. Everything is an AI wearable tacked on to something else we’ve already had for years.
EV battery tech, there’s some decent work being done there. A few other niche cases like that. But the rest is one big fucking con game. It’s all a race to find out how much money you can gouge out of people before the system just breaks.