I’ve been listening to a lot of tech podcasts lately, and I find it fascinating to hear that there is just as much of a “bubble” in Silicon Valley as there is inside the Beltway.

This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte is a prime example.  His guests usually sound like a bunch of college frat kids yucking it up about who’s buying what companies or who’s selling what web sites or who’s got the most followers on Twitter.  They’re all looking for publicity for whatever venture they happen to be working on at the time.  I think the whole “technology field,” to these guys, is simply the process of building a hugely popular web site and subsequently selling it to someone else before it comes crashing down in flames.  They really don’t seem to care about what the site actually does – they just want to know how it leverages the “social graph” or how they can “monetize” it.

I guess I’m an old fashioned Virginia hick… I still look at a software project in terms of how it can actually benefit a user.  As opposed to taking any old useless crap project and making up a slick sales pitch to deceive people into thinking it can benefit them, which seems more like the Silicon Valley way.

UPDATE: Later in the very same episode of TWiT I referenced above, ABC's Dan Patterson courageously rose above the din and said the exact same thing:

"I wonder if we don't live in our own little bubble ... I'm also a little concerned that, to middle America, we may look like a bunch of dilettantes running around with our gadgets and toys." -Dan Patterson, TWiT Episode 187, "So Say We All"

A valid point, Dan.