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Why Toys?

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Why Toys?

#21

Post by pmilot »

Bjartr wrote: post #15
zerostar07 wrote: post #2

Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.

I'm curious. Why do you believe those statements to be true? Looking back through history there is a constant pattern of each generation decrying the immaturity of the generations that follow it. Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia, or the same mistake was being made again and again in drawing that conclusion. How do you know your conclusion isn't due to the same mistake?

There's a third possibility: The definition of maturity is constantly shifting over generations. Each new generation is not "less mature" than the previous, but it's not an illusion either. There really is a change in the mindset of what it means to be an adult, it's just not a strict one-dimensional scale.

Re: Why Toys?

#22

Post by imhoguy »

Animats wrote: post #17
philwelch wrote: post #4

> This trend does not fit with history either. Standard Oil, US Steel, and Boeing were all iconically huge companies that were built as businesses. None of them went through a phase where they looked like toys. This is largely because "inventing a new thing" and "building a massive business from that invention" are more closely linked now than they have been, historically. Standard Oil and US Steel postdated the inve…

The Apple II was not a toy. It was what businesses used to run VisiCalc, the spreadsheet program. Huge productivity gain over doing spreadsheets with a big piece of ruled paper and a calculator.

That was parent's point. Apple I was a toy, and Apple II a serious product.

Re: Why Toys?

#23

Post by schnevets »

I am constantly thinking about the question: What is the future tech entrepreneur's lemonade stand?

It would have to be something typical and low-skill so a young entrepreneur can build it and learn the hard lessons about running a business, but it needs some special defense to avoid being out-innovated by an Amazon or Google. The Facebook example as a toy is perfect - the platform was able to thrive by being hyper-localized, and offering its own personality and levity.

It seems to me like the founders of the future are coding games today.

Re: Why Toys?

#24

Post by zerostar07 »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #8
zerostar07 wrote: post #2

Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.

Many large tech businesses start out as "toys" because its easier to build a new technology to pursue something trivial than something essential. That's just how development works. Hobbies will pay more for something that might be a novelty than an improvement in efficiency. Tesla started with Luxury cars for the same reason, and those cars could be considered "toys" of a certain type. The next Microsoft or Google co…

There is also the very real danger of investing in things just because they look toyish in an attempt to follow the pattern. it doesnt always pay out.

Re: Why Toys?

#25

Post by taeric »

zerostar07 wrote: post #2

Toys are on demand because people have become more childish in a way. Avoiding responsibility, seeking protection, hiding behind the groupthink, having more time to engage in juvenile/schoolyard behavior. That is not considered in the article.

I'd be surprised if we are truly more childish than historical periods. Indeed, just going off of naive views of life expectancy, we used to spend more of our living time as children.

Now, leisure time has certainly increased. To an extent. We now have to spend far less time preparing food/clothing/etc. At least, for the average person. Upper classed people probably had more leisure time in the past, since they had other people to do this work for them.

I saw a number recently on how much less time people spend doing laundry. It is impressive.

Re: Why Toys?

#26

Post by taeric »

zerostar07 wrote: post #19
Bjartr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. Why do you believe those statements to be true? Looking back through history there is a constant pattern of each generation decrying the immaturity of the generations that follow it. Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia, or the same mistake was being made again and again in drawing that conclusion. How do you know your conclusion isn't due to the same mistake?

> Either maturity has been on a constant decline for millennia personal responsibility has been declining with the aid of comforting technology and it has led to the constant extension of state goverment reach. it's very possible the complaints are valid, and that's simply how history advances.

I'd be interested in citations saying personal responsibility has declined. More likely that your exposure to everyone else's responsibility has increased.

Re: Why Toys?

#27

Post by turingcompeteme »

Standard Oil actually did start out as a toy. They provided oil to burn in lamps. At the time most people thought that was a somewhat silly gimmick and a fad that would quickly pass. Oil in general was seen as something neat but not essential for years. But just like facebook, many people soon came around to the idea and it took over the world.

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. covers this all in incredible detail, if it is something that interests you.

Re: Why Toys?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

ebspelman wrote: post #10

This reminds me a lot of a chapter in Jesse Schell's awesome book, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.[1][2] He recommends occasionally thinking about a game as a toy. "The Lens of The Toy: To use this lens, stop thinking about whether your game is fun to play, and start thinking about whether it is fun to play with ." [1] https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/012369... [2] PDF version (see book…

[deleted]

Re: Why Toys?

#29

Post by psadri »

Toy analogy mostly makes sense for online media where attention is valuable. If a “toy” is loved/used by tons of people, then it has their attention, and this attention can be monetized. Most likely through the usual advertising surface that it presents.

Re: Why Toys?

#30

Post by ouid »

I call bullshit. The economy has run on toys ever since we figured out how to grow food with machines.
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