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The sad truth about Facebook

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Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#31
post #29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the more minds there are collaborating to realize human potential, eliminate needless suffering, and healing our planet, the better. There is simply nothing else worth pursuing that has lasting value. Please explain how in the early days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs you'd know that they were going to help humanity? The whole heal-the-planet argument is very different from do-something-challenging. You and the auth…

1.) They are not different at all. We have to 'do something' to fix our civilization's problems or 'heal our planet'. That doing part is where startups come into the picture. 2.) You ever read Steve Wozniack's autobiography? If you haven't, you don't know the full story. They believed a PC could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, it could realize creative and scientific potential. Steve J. believed computers wer…

They believed a PC could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, it could realize creative and scientific potential. Steve J. believed computers were 'bicycles for the mind'.

You seen the slide decks or talked to the founders in the Valley? If you are going on vision, trust me, today's founders are not short on it.

Now, how good of a job the founders are doing in bringing their vision to life? We don't know and won't know for a while. At best, we should hold judgement IMO.

This generation will yield many more scientists inspired to create technology that serves Earth.

May be. But that could also mean that you no longer need to be a scientist to build something that serves earth. You could just be some econ grad who gets an idea for a micro-lending site and launches Kiva.

Also, it's unfair that you see Facebook's mission of connecting people or Twitter's role during emergencies in a different realm to Apple making computing simpler.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#33

Complete poppycock. Running Hackers and Founders SV, I think I have a pretty decent picture of what Silicon Valley is like on the ground floor, and as far as I'm concerned it's pretty frigging amazing. There's tons of small teams doing amazing things with Big Data and real time analytics like Factual (making Open Data easier to manage and use), MixPanel (Real Time analytics for applications). There's a number of comp…

[deleted]

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#34

Complete poppycock. Running Hackers and Founders SV, I think I have a pretty decent picture of what Silicon Valley is like on the ground floor, and as far as I'm concerned it's pretty frigging amazing. There's tons of small teams doing amazing things with Big Data and real time analytics like Factual (making Open Data easier to manage and use), MixPanel (Real Time analytics for applications). There's a number of comp…

Yeah, this is one of those debates that's going to generate a lot of heat, but not much light. Because, frankly, for every guy who thinks that it's a crime that the valley isn't 95% about battery technology and semiconductor startups, there's a guy who wants to breathlessly pronounce Twitter a "new communications protocol" (Twitter is a web service -- it uses the same protocols as everyone else on the web -- and it's only "profitable" because it made a few sweetheart, short-term deals with unclear renewal prospects).

There are certainly a few companies in the valley that are doing interesting R&D, but I tend to agree with the article that the vast majority of the crap we hear about on a day-to-day basis is fluff. It may be "Big Data" fluff, but it's still fluff, and popularity doesn't make it less fluffy.

From a technology perspective, cranking out database-backed web pages is a completely uninteresting problem. For that matter, so are most of the common "big data" applications (grinding through log files), or revolutionary companies (where the "revolution" usually boils down to killing a more traditional market...with a database-backed web app). Meanwhile, industrialists in other countries are developing more efficient wind turbines, new electronics manufacturing techniques, battery chemistry with greater capacity, and they're also investing hundreds of billions of dollars into pharmaceutical research. From a technological perspective, it's not even in the same universe.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#35
post #29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...the more minds there are collaborating to realize human potential, eliminate needless suffering, and healing our planet, the better. There is simply nothing else worth pursuing that has lasting value. Please explain how in the early days of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs you'd know that they were going to help humanity? The whole heal-the-planet argument is very different from do-something-challenging. You and the auth…

1.) They are not different at all. We have to 'do something' to fix our civilization's problems or 'heal our planet'. That doing part is where startups come into the picture. 2.) You ever read Steve Wozniack's autobiography? If you haven't, you don't know the full story. They believed a PC could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, it could realize creative and scientific potential. Steve J. believed computers wer…

[deleted]

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#36
post #31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.) They are not different at all. We have to 'do something' to fix our civilization's problems or 'heal our planet'. That doing part is where startups come into the picture. 2.) You ever read Steve Wozniack's autobiography? If you haven't, you don't know the full story. They believed a PC could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, it could realize creative and scientific potential. Steve J. believed computers wer…

They believed a PC could do a lot more than just crunch numbers, it could realize creative and scientific potential. Steve J. believed computers were 'bicycles for the mind'. You seen the slide decks or talked to the founders in the Valley? If you are going on vision , trust me, today's founders are not short on it. Now, how good of a job the founders are doing in bringing their vision to life? We don't know and won'…

You're putting words in my mouth. You should work for Rolling Stone or TechCrunch.

They solve problems or they wouldn't be relevant. Don't over analyze words and miss the essence of what's being said.

All I am saying is...

There are great entrepreneurs...the few who look beyond the existing paradigm and beyond personal gain to advance humanity as a whole with their discoveries, models, and products. Edison, Ford, Jobs, Knight etc...

And there are good entrepreneurs...the rest who make widgets inside what the great entrepreneurs made, they usually think too much to create anything revolutionary. You run into a few of these every day in every city.

and...

I don't know the author that well or care to either, this particular article was just well written and made a valid point. Some priorities need to shifted around...

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#37

I think Twitter has immense value. And I would be happy to see it go public and achieve $billions in market cap. Cant say the same thing about facebook or zynga. sometimes i feel like facebook is that waste-of-my-time show that i get pulled into when i switch on my tv. it sucks up time from my life i will never get back.

it sucks up time from my life i will never get back.

You could be talking about the entertainment industry. They seem to be doing ok in the market.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#39
post #2

Yeah, it would be easier innovate on hard problems, Mr. Myhrvold, if you you weren't trying to strangle startups and small tech firms every chance you get with your Intellectual Ventures .

I'm not sure, but is his company every sued any startup for patent infringement. I read about his company in super-Freakonomics and he seemed to be genuinely caring about solving hard, big problems. He may be amassing patents to get protection but unless he actively screws small companies by buying patents, I'm not sure I would call his company a patent troll.

Re: The sad truth about Facebook

#40
Twitter is a noisy circus of spats and celebrity watching, and its hapless founders still can’t figure out how to make money.

Anybody who says this is clearly just trolling, since everyone knows they are making a ton of money selling the data to the search engines before they even get started on the advertising, which they are working on. And as for "twitter is for celebrity watching", that meme died a year ago.

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