This.
The appropriation of “tech” to mean web-first business has gone to our collective heads. Real tech is hard, expensive and mostly progressed by the interplay of science and blue-sky inventions. Not really something easily adaptable to the venture-startup model. We’ve seen a couple of attempts at funding fusion/fission energy along the same lines as SaaS, but honestly, it seems more like a tech-bro indulgence than real technological progress.
Meanwhile the conventional tech industries such as medical equipment, have seen decent progress at the incremental pace of the respective industries. Adding a voice interface to your car, or allowing remote surgery over the net is hardly something we should credit the “tech” companies for.
After 20-some years in the “tech” industry, hoping to get-rich-fast, and THEN do the real tech stuff with that capital, I’m feeling like an extremely well-prepared failure. By now I would do nearly anything for access to a physics lab and funding from a ROI tolerant source. Only problem is that academic funding agencies have been mimicking the “successful” VC model for decades as well…
Meanwhile the conventional tech industries such as medical equipment, have seen decent progress at the incremental pace of the respective industries. Adding a voice interface to your car, or allowing remote surgery over the net is hardly something we should credit the “tech” companies for.
After 20-some years in the “tech” industry, hoping to get-rich-fast, and THEN do the real tech stuff with that capital, I’m feeling like an extremely well-prepared failure. By now I would do nearly anything for access to a physics lab and funding from a ROI tolerant source. Only problem is that academic funding agencies have been mimicking the “successful” VC model for decades as well…
Reckoning indeed.