The Committee to Nuke Elysium

The rise of the sharing economy and the brazen pugnacity of Silicon Valley explain both NASDAQ’s current frothiness and the class anxieties the New York Times has finally caught up to. This is a different kind of bubble. There is real money to be made in applying the new technological innovations that have been pouring out of the Valley for lo these many decades. But change — relentless creative destruction — freaks people out.

What makes the current boom different from the last one is that the last time around, the froth was mostly tied to the potential of new technology. This time around, it is a reflection of the reality of new technology. This explains both the wealth being created and the arrogance of those who are deploying new tech. They think they know better because: have you looked at a smartphone lately? It also explains both the sense of loss felt by so many as the old San Francisco melts away like a sand castle before the incoming tide, and the excitement experienced by those who — as San Franciscans have always been wont to do — thrill to embrace the new.

It is entirely possible that 10 or 20 years hence we may look back at the era when pink-moustachioed cars teemed on the streets of San Francisco as the last absurd, ridiculous gasp of the second great tech bubble before it popped. Maybe we’ll even recall this moment as the tipping point before Silicon Valley arrogance and accelerating class stratification precipitated a political reaction. We’ll understand how those convivial fist bumps masked the relentless emasculation of labor, the division of society into freelancers subletting their cars and couches and physical labor for the benefit of a smaller and smaller group of people at the top of the techno-food chain.