I think a lot of HN in general is made up of programmers at big tech companies working on what seem like small problems, but from the perspective of someone working in the biotech sector, let me assure you there's a lot going on outside of silicon valley's open offices. I mean first, lets appreciate that tech companies have actually majorly impacted the world in ways sci-fi authors couldn't have imagined, and for all the negatives, there's a reason the tech sector was (prior to recent times) so widely loved - the fact that I can reconnect through facebook with a friend I haven't seen in a decade that I may never have meet again otherwise is straight up magic and that matters. And google search and smartphones - don't underestimate them! But yeah, the valley seems to have this "hardware is hard" mentality (even though it's built off of the semiconductor industry...), but just look around. We've got for the first time ever a potentially sustainable spaceflight industry blossoming, biotech is making strides like you wouldn't believe in tackling some of the most complex diseases, your inkjet printer is a marvel of microfluidics, green energy sources are becoming cost competitive to the fuels that have fueled our entire development as a species from an agrarian to an industrialized civilization, we've got vaccines that might be ready to defeat a global pandemic within a couple years of the first case recorded. I do work in the printing and inks space. There, just recently, there's been a transition away from using UV cured or dried inks that release volatile organic compounds into new inks that are cured with electron beams - i mean, the amount of technological complexity and innovation that goes into making the packaged product you pick off the shelf have the color that it does! And these have real impacts - eliminating huge sources of pollutants and improving health and the planet. There could and should be more, especially more investment into R&D, but don't underestimate what's happening outside the Silicon Valley bubble, and don't underestimate what's happening inside the bubble either.