I don't care much about the direction itself, but I'd love to see technology decouple from that hideous office park called "Silicon Valley". What need is a cultural correction, not just a market adjustment.
Economics play a large role. Countries with high medical costs tend to have more magical thinking that leads to overuse of "alternative" treatments with no scientific backing and that don't work.
Why? It's hard to accept that one is taking an inferior solution due to economic constraint, so people fall into a sort of magical thinking/self-deception that leads them to reject modern medicine.
In a society with expensive private health insurance and extremely high medical costs, it makes sense that people would resort to false cures. Of course, it's not always about money. See: Steve Jobs. It tends to take on a life of its own, after a certain point, because the mind-virus that might start due to inaccessibility of care lives on and spreads.