Kill the Unicorns
Innovation, innovation everywhere, and not a new idea to think
When did we start settling for reboots?
Read: Lots of interesting stuff this week, including a gorgeous and heartbreaking Dan Zak piece on the one-thousandth day. Also: how to search better online, a great Chris Tomlinson column about global poverty, a terrific annotation of Greta Thunberg’s U.N. speech, why companies are offering tuition assistance, a great essay on how overworked salaried workers and unpredictable hours are fracturing American social life, a royal skewering of Beto by Eric Levitz, why we don’t have more affordable housing, and a brilliant essay by Cory Doctorow on why we need to pay attention to fake news (it’s not what you’re thinking).
Watch: Kirsten Dunst having a moment in On Becoming a God in Central Florida
Listen: to the new album from Daveed Diggs’ band that pushes the boundaries of hip hop
But first: Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that all these unicorns are going down.
A unicorn, as I’m sure you know, is what they call a privately held company worth $1 billion. Unicorns also aren’t real, except to those who conjure them into existence with lurid valuations. As far as I can tell, finance bros create a unicorn by saying that a tech bro’s app is worth $1 billion, and then something happens, and then step three, except unlike the underwear gnomes here step three is not profit but an IPO. There is never profit.
But these days they aren’t getting to step three because as it turns out unicorns aren’t real, and what they’re doing isn’t particularly innovative.
There’s the office space company that lost almost a billion dollars last year and owes almost $18 billion in rent, which is particularly bad if your core business is basically rent. There’s the taxi company that had a higher valuation than General Motors but has never made a dime of profit and is laying off workers. There’s the exercise bike company that thinks it’s a media platform. I don’t have an MBA, but I do have a Russian studies degree and can recognize a Potyemkin village when I see one. All these companies promised disruption, to “move fast and break things.” Said the co-creator of HBO’s Silicon Valley, “It’s almost as if breaking all the things isn’t always a good thing — who could have foreseen?”
They are not even delivering real innovation anymore. Instead, we just got re-invention. Yet another app on your smartphone isn’t really innovative, partly because we’re at the end of the smartphone era. The new iPhone’s big advancement? A better camera. Whoop. And that’s about it. The next big thing in phones will be no phones, but apparently the tech bros didn’t have a step two figured out after they reinvented telephones. Maybe it’s the a hub. Or a single device that does everything. Kind of like your phone, except they won’t call it that. In other words, stop buying new phones.
We’ve lost the plot on innovation. It’s not the shiny new thing. One guy—a CTO for a professional services company—has it right: “A lot of people mistakenly think that innovation is about having great ideas. Ideas don’t equal innovation. Innovation is applying breakthrough ideas to create new opportunities and solve seemingly intractable problems.” And folks, getting a taxi was not a seemingly intractable problem. Nor was getting office space, or finding something to watch while you worked out.
Instead, all we are getting are reboots. (See also: Biden, Joe and Wars, Star.) Weezer put out an album entirely of covers, and not of deep cuts or obscure songs deserving of more attention. Nor were they particularly inventive reimagined covers. They chose broadly popular hits and covered them faithfully in near-imitations, and their only intent was to make withdrawals on our banks of nostalgia, borrowing on memories. Donald Trump ran as a nostalgia act, and American Mussolini in a red gimme cap. He wants to send us back to the moon and to make America great again.
There are people out there creating art, planning missions to Mars, and and looking for breakthrough ideas. And I hesitate to blame our financial system for them not getting more support, but I’m not sure why. The measure of innovation has become figuring out how to repackage some existing thing to create yet another billionaire.
Kill the unicorns, all of them. Hunt them down in Silicon Valley and the movie theaters. Ban them from our stages and legislatures. We will never reclaim the past, and Africa was not that good a song anyway. It’s time to make something new.
What I’m reading
Did you know that search engines only show 4% of what is available online? Me neither. Here’s how to get more.
My friend C.T. bookended an interesting column about global poverty with a rapier lede and a David Bowie kicker. Nice.
Young people are more likely to deactivate their social media accounts than older people are.
A speechwriting professor annotates Greta Thunberg’s speech to the U.N., and folks, it’s so good.
Biggest source of immigration to the United States? Africa.
Companies are increasingly offering tuition assistance, and they’re saving a ton of money on recruiting because of it.
Fascinating essay on how unpredictable hourly work schedules and overworked salaried employees hinder social life in America.
Here is some bonkers hold music.
Dan Zak is a genius, and I’m not sure we deserve him, but we get to read him.
Apparently releasing diversity reports for five years in a row has not led to much in the way of more diverse hires at the big tech companies. On the other hand, the number of women working in technical positions in the companies that participated in an annual report has risen to 29.8 percent at the entry-level and 25.12 percent overall.
Most new jobs are going to people who were not actively looking for a job the previous month.
Beto has become “a Tucker Carlson caricature of elite liberalism come to life,” writes Eric Levitz.
Here’s why we don’t have more affordable housing.
Hey, remember that time the President suggested nuking hurricanes and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration had to issue an explainer about why that was a bad idea?
Cory Doctorow on what we need to learn from fake news started off smart and then took off right at the end when my brain got all explody. Seriously, read this.
Here’s how Trump has changed the makeup of the GOP.
Points and miles are not what is driving customer loyalty programs.
Here’s a subhead for you: “Conservatives say we’ve abandoned reason and civility. The Old South used the same language to defend slavery.”
Recent Studies Indicate: Incentivizing managers leads to lower productivity. Apparently fracking—and not the oilfield wastewater disposal wells—cause earthquakes.
News Nerds: Moral reasoning among journalists is in decline. Did you know that preventing government employees from speaking to the press is against the law? Public radio is bringing in more money than public TV for the first time.
Last Word: Yo, Brits. NOT COOL!
What I’m watching
On Becoming a God in Central Florida is a dark, funny satire of the emptiness of the American hustle. Kirsten Dunst is doing her best work in this Showtime series, and if you need a comedic credential, George Clooney is exec producing.
What I’m listening to
My friend R.H. returns to You Made It Weird, Pete Holmes’ podcast.
Daveed Diggs and his industrial rap project clipping take a big swing with their newest album, There Existed an Addiction to Blood.
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