London in transit: Between defeatism and optimism
A series of observations about the city’s tech scene, gathered from many leisurely walks
Dear readers,
This edition is quite long. I thought about publishing it in parts, but decided against it. For carving out the time to read it in full, you have my utmost thanks. The point of this newsletter project is to connect with people who care about understanding the world through the big picture and the granular detail — those who revel in the amusement of connecting the two. Without further ado:
The whirling sound of tiny wheels greeting the surface of concrete streets is present across the city — on any day, at any time of the day. Loud enough for fellow passersby to notice, common enough for it not to be a nuisance.
It did strike me as a curious scene the first few times I saw it — the steady stream of people going around London with their suitcases with them. Huh, there are always people with suitcases here. I would counter the claim that it’s an ordinary scene in any major tourist city in the world. I grew up in Bali, and it still stood out to me as something peculiar.
The more I notice it, the more I find it to be a comforting scene, especially these days, as I’m pondering the possibility of moving back to Indonesia. The auditory cue from these tiny wheels acts as a reminder that the city is filled with people moving in and out, and that this migration — whatever it represents, be it between houses, cities, or countries, be it temporary or permanent — is a constant part of London living. It paints the everyday picture of what it means to be part of the city. A departure from knowing a city for its landmarks, to knowing it from having walked it; from having moved about it.
Walking is a method of inquiry, and from it emerged an embodied knowing of a place. No, you probably won’t cover all possible surface area, let alone memorise all the paths you’ve travelled across. But it is a kind of knowing still. In the case of my London walks, they have brought forth this imagery of the mobile and transient amidst buildings and monuments that have stood for centuries. There’s great poetry there, deserving of a write-up.
And for that reason, I’m taking it up as a theme of today’s essay.
I am exploring a framework that sees a city as an idea; that a city is not just its grand infrastructures or a series of top-down master plans set up by figures of authority and power. A city is what the people within it represent, how they carry themselves in relation to the city, and the way they move about it — informed by their baggage, destinations, and all.
As someone who writes about technology, my take on the idea of London as a city will take up a more niche inquiry of understanding it as a hub of innovation. What themes come about when one inquires about the current state of its tech industry? What notions arise and form our knowing of the city from having shared space with technologists and people working in tech more broadly?
My “leisurely walks” entail attending tech events with no set agendas and giving myself the freedom to chat to whoever I feel like chatting to. There isn’t a pressure to come up with a story idea, to schedule an interview, or to do a write-up about the event. The point is just to share presence.
Given the freedom to just be, themes emerged on their own, without much of my prodding.
This piece is built upon those themes, which come about from a series of anecdotes. The goal is not to be all-encompassing. Rather, it is to present a series of photographs.
That is to say that what is represented is the photographer’s limited point of view, and also that the state of the subject matter could very possibly change (some would argue that it should).
I’ll break this into three parts: defeatism, hope, and optimism.
Let’s start in the trenches.
Negative spaces
I wonder why people often bring up other cities when assessing London. They would mention San Francisco, New York, Paris, or Berlin, with the context being that London has much catching up to do. “London’s lacking this, City X has more of that. Why can’t London be like that, too?” These are some of the sentiments I’ve come across so far.
I don’t know if it’s an extension of the culture of self-deprecation, or if it’s rooted in something more fundamental — a lack of self-belief, perhaps. Whichever is the case, this constant comparison left an impression upon me.
During my time writing about the Indonesian tech industry, rarely was the attention given to another country’s industry. Granted, we’re a nation of 280 million people; we make up the biggest economy in Southeast Asia. We could afford focusing on our home turf. If anything, the battle to win is the one fought within our borders.
Here, in London, a theme that emerged from attending industry talks and conversing with people is that there is a nagging need to contextualise London against other cities or against the global arena.
You could probably argue it’s for the best. We’re setting the city, and to that end, the country, up to high standards, and that the gap between where we are and what’s ideal is a much-needed motivator for change. That’s the encouraging, future-looking interpretation.
But in the here and now, what has resulted from the constant comparison is a city that is understood not for what it stands for, but for its negations. That when one has to think about an idea that encapsulates the city, the idea that emerges is that it is not that of something else. Not big enough, not capitalised enough, not ambitious enough, not crazy enough, not growing enough. A negative space, in a sense.
We’ve built a city that could not exist by its own standards. Everything has to be benchmarked elsewhere
There are, of course, nuances to this dynamic. If you situate London as part of the UK, you would see it as a place with a high concentration of digital talent. If you situate London as part of Europe, the city is understood as part of a larger collective of innovation hubs that are equally overlooked. But in the context of its standing against other cities, the sentiment is that London is competitive, but not competitive enough. Especially when placed side by side with Silicon Valley. (I’ll talk about building a tech city within the image of Silicon Valley in the next section.)
There’s a larger, ongoing debate that informs this. Any self-respecting industry-oriented technologists would have to think deeply about the choice of building in the UK vs the US. It’s still a divisive topic. But if you’re a pragmatist, or being pragmatic, the choice writes itself. As a founder, you’d get better access to bigger pools of capital in the US. As an engineer, you’d get better salaries. As a venture capitalist, you’d have more options to choose from because many ambitious founders have made the choice to be based there. (Recent political climate is changing this dynamic. However, the broader themes remain.)
But more fundamental questions of what it means to innovate and build tech businesses are still present. People still grapple with the questions of what it means to leave, what it means to stay; where one’s allegiance lie; to what extent must the neoliberal subject give a damn about the agenda of nation-building; how compelled must one feel to bear the burden of contributing back to a country that has not made it easy for one to be a risk-taking subject.
These are big questions. And the project of making London (and the UK) a place where people would gladly choose to be requires work — attracting more venture capital to support not just startups, but also scale-ups, lobbying for policies to remove red tape, etc. Against the backdrop of these difficult questions, what I often find is a persisting belief that the city (and the country) is risk-averse.
I’m not an industry person, merely an observer of the industry. My introduction to this risk-aversion does not come from encountering it first-hand. Rather, it is in the form of rhetoric. It is presented as a mode of belief, often to justify doing the pragmatic thing.
It seems to be operating as a mask for defeatism — the acceptance of how things are at present, with no intention of shaking up current dynamics.
I’d argue defeatism is different from pessimism. Pessimism leans on believing that things will end badly. But defeatism is believing that the game is already over before it has started. That it’s impossible for a meaningful change to take place. That we are already so far behind. And unlike pessimism that can oftentimes be constructive — it could inspire change — defeatism is a dead-end. Defeatism is subtle and silent, and for that reason, possibly more dangerous. While some people moan, others just let out a tiny sigh and accept the status quo. The cause of stagnation is not in big failures; it’s in these silent acceptances.
The price of hope
I live in East London. It’s the area I moved into when I first moved to London and I’ve stuck around for familiarity’s sake. What I quickly learned from the seemingly random banter about residential areas, is that there are layers of subtexts attached to your choice of dwelling. Allow me to recall a brief conversation:
“Where do you live?”
“I live in [an area in East London].”
“Oh, no wonder you want to move back [to Indonesia].”
I had previously disclosed that I might not be staying in London for all that long, but I didn’t say anything about not liking the area where I live. I’m quite fond of it, actually. And, it so happens to be the area where the dream of building a tech city in London is situated.
To be fair, I get where the sentiment was coming from. East London is home to some of the poorest boroughs in London — which, in a way, makes the initiative of an East London Tech City all the more transformational.
What is present in an initiative like this — and becomes further apparent in the context of East London — is the set of assumptions about the role of tech clusters in shaping cities; and more abstractly, the role of technology in shaping societies.
People look towards tech as a panacea — an antithesis of slowing economic growth, social decline, and institutional decay. It is in this hope of reversal and reinvention that the dream of London’s tech city was introduced 15 years ago.
On 4 November 2010, in a speech to tech leaders and entrepreneurs in East London, Prime Minister David Cameron declared the government’s ambition to turn London’s East End into a tech city that could rival Silicon Valley. Here’s an excerpt from his speech:
“We’re not just going to back the big businesses of today, we’re going to back the big businesses of tomorrow. We are firmly on the side of the high-growth, highly innovative companies of the future. Don’t doubt our ambition.
Right now, Silicon Valley is the leading place in the world for high-tech growth and innovation. But there’s no reason why it has to be so predominant. Question is: where will its challengers be? Bangalore? Hefei? Moscow?
My argument today is that if we have the confidence to really go for it and the understanding of what it takes, London could be one of them. All the elements are here.
And our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make East London one of the world’s great technology centres.
I know this can’t — and won’t — happen overnight. But today, I want to show how we can get there.”
(You can find the full transcript of his speech here.)
In the same speech, Mr Cameron announced: £200 million of equity finance for businesses with high growth potential, £200 million for new Technology and Innovation Centres, £15 million on tech support and the creation of a presence in East London, the creation of a new Entrepreneur Visa, and a review of Britain’s IP laws to make them fit with the internet age better. He also shared plans to work alongside a dozen or so companies to bring the tech city dream to life — Facebook, Google, Cisco, Intel, Barclays, and Silicon Valley Bank were some he mentioned.
It was an ambitious project for the government. But the ambition didn’t start there. By 2010, there were already over 3,200 digital economy firms in Inner East London, according to a report. Two years before Mr Cameron’s speech, the Financial Times wrote a blog about the up-and-coming “Silicon Roundabout”, where tech entrepreneurs set up shops, lured by cheaper rents and the area’s vibrant scene.
15 years after the rebranding from Silicon Roundabout to East London Tech City, we still haven’t seen the birth of a Silicon Valley-like tech cluster. Instead, within those years, The Standard reports: “Rents for good quality space around the Old Street Roundabout have increased by 70% in the last 15 years, while the same grade of buildings in the wider London market have seen rents grow by over 60%.” The case that had initially attracted startup founders to huddle around Old Street is no longer as strong as it used to be. Why stay in an area where the rent rises steeper than in other places?
One thing to be made clear is that the tech industry is not dependent on there being a tech city to exist. It’s a good-to-have, but certainly not a must-have. London still has an active, rapidly growing tech industry, despite not having its version of Silicon Valley. That is not to say that startups have all fled East London. Just that they don’t only congregate in East London. What we have is a more distributed ecosystem.
The UK is not unique in its dream to replicate Silicon Valley. Many governments across the world have dreamed, attempted, and to varying degrees, failed, in the pursuit of copying the ambition, innovation, and grit seen in Silicon Valley. But perhaps there’s something to celebrate in having that desire alone.
Allow me to break the pace a bit here and recall one of the first events I attended after the pandemic restrictions of hosting large gatherings were lifted.
It was December 2021. I was still based in Bali at the time. I decided to check out a startup summit to see if there was anyone interesting I could meet. I stayed until the end, and right at the very end, all the attendees were asked to stand up and chant along to the tagline of #SiliconBali. The speaker would start by loudly proclaiming, “Silicon Bali!”, and the rest of us were required to reply with, “Go! Go! Go!”. (I went deep into my gallery and found the footage from that evening. Attached below.)
If this feels cult-ish to you, let me just clarify that Indonesians are very big on theatrics. You can be sure there would be some elements of performance, be it traditional dances, mass karaoke, or, the mildest version of it, slogan chanting, in gatherings like these.
Anyway, I’m veering off. I hadn’t been to large meet-ups like the one I went to that December in a long time. Having forgotten about our inclination for theatricalities, I was caught off guard, and, unironically, deeply amused.
Let’s be clear, even if you say “Silicon Bali!” out loud three times, no genie would appear and grant your wish of transforming a place into a tech hub. So, yes, it was gimmicky and was probably there for the photo op.
But there is also something so earnest when you see it as a form of hope for renewal, for reinvention. It’s a declaration for declaration’s sake. Like a statement of unconditional love, without the need for accountability. No one’s running to ask the person who came up with the slogan to take responsibility over this “dream”. Where’s the follow-up? The ten steps? The investment board? The proposals and blueprints?
It’s a shout out to the void, but in the most jovial kind of way. A statement that cements, “I haven’t given up on the dream, and neither should you.”
I like that about hoping. It’s free.
The point I wanted to make is that the idea of replicating Silicon Valley is there for its enchantment’s sake. It’s not about being able to create an exact replica. It’s about existing in a state of mind where that possibility is within reach, despite what the case studies and historical records have shown you.
I’d argue it’s due to its impossibility, rather than its practicalities, that the dream of a Silicon Valley-like tech city perseveres. In a way, we can only claim that we are ambitious when we tie our goals onto working on these impossible dreams.
The East London Tech City initiative has largely fizzled out over the years. But the project of turning London into a city where its tech scene is taken seriously is still underway. Some might say, it’s more alive than ever.
A case for optimism
It was the weekend from two weeks ago. The sun was out. I took myself on a walk around the city, with a quick stop at a nearby bubble tea shop. And then I walked, walked, and walked, sipping my bubble tea joyfully while enjoying the sun and the breeze.
I did have a destination in mind. I wanted to check out an AI hackathon happening in East Central London. When I arrived, the demos were already in session.
That Saturday, while it seemed like the rest of the London population was out enjoying themselves, around 50 people had decided to spend their weekend staying indoors, hacking for 8 hours straight. They had been there since 10 AM. I, on the other hand, arrived around 6 PM. Those who had showcased their demo seemed chill and laid back. A few others were still tinkering with their presentations on their laptops.
The remnants of what the previous 8 hours looked like were present in the empty pizza boxes stacked at one corner and the empty cans of Coca-Cola and Diet Coke sprinkled around the room.
That evening, I watched some interesting projects being presented, and met with some interesting builders.
The next day, on Sunday — also a lovely day to be out and about — I visited another hackathon, this time in South London. Over the past two days, a few dozen builders, designers and policy hackers had been busy coming up with solutions to fight back against overlooked problems of piling trash, unsafe streets, declining education quality, among others.
It’s clear to me that there is a growing momentum in the city.
Before the demos started, a few speakers took the stage to speak on the importance of spaces like these. Echoes of tech solutionism — the belief that technology can solve all societal problems — were present in their speeches.
“It has become fashionable to talk Britain down. […] First, we need to be confident that this is an amazing city, an amazing country. When you improve this country, you are improving the world,” said one of the speakers.
There was a logic of amplification present. That to make the city amazing, you first need to believe that it’s already amazing, to begin with. But the need to remind the city of its greatness is rooted in the increasing self-doubt the city has over its own future.
There’s an interesting dynamic about what it means to be an optimist present in rhetoric like this. It’s not about always looking at the bright side of things, and in the process, being in denial of systemic failures. It’s essentially about building a relationship with the future. One that feels worthy of anticipation and labour.
In this case, optimism is a temporal framework — it’s a bridge to fast-forward the future into the present, allowing that vision of the desired future to take precedence over present states. In taking on that framework, the way in which we carry ourselves in the present changes. In many instances, it nudges us to become more of a risk-taker.
These are the series of snapshots I’ve gathered from my walks. And I present them to you here as a showcase of how one might arrive at an understanding of a city, guided by the limits and affordances of using “walking” as a method for knowing.
The themes — defeatism, hope, optimism — are, in a sense, modes of being. As modes of being, they don’t exist in isolation. They are interlinked. Defeatist modes feed into the need for hope, feed into the need for optimism. Much in the same way modes of optimism feed into the need for defeatism — like a hedging strategy to prevent the bubble from getting too inflated that it’ll pop off on its own. And as modes of being, their presence is always in a state of flux, always up for being questioned and challenged.
Just like the people walking around London dragging their suitcases across the city, these modes are transient in nature. They are always on the move. Always with the next destination in mind.
I am dedicating this edition to Dipsy, a 16-year-old cat I had the pleasure of befriending. He died a few days ago due to declining health. Rest in peace, Dipsy. You are missed.
Many thanks to my dear friends for their inputs — Hasna for the edits and Wina for the social media design consultation session.