You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#91

Post by zahrc » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

> [...] it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing [...]

If there’s something that I’m really really grateful of, growing up in Germany, it’s the dual apprenticeship system. [1] And Germany also does a splendid job at giving students a glimpse of working experience at uni (if you are willing, at least)

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16159943

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#92

Post by kristopolous » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

I'm writing a book on future thought tentatively titled

The Soul of Tomorrow

A futurist's construction kit

A field manual for how to think about and create "future stuff", stepwise advances for a continuous world.

I'm about 25,000 words in. It's currently being developed on github. If this really interests anybody, I'd really love to talk to them about things.

The chapters are starting to come together, but honestly this is 15 years of thinking and currently only 15 days of writing (November novel writing)

I intend to eventually get this to a publishable academic state with careful citations. I've even taken a week off work to travel around to libraries and do research for it.

I'm looking at how visions of possible futures operate, how they change, get communicated, materialize, and often collapse.

I've developed a number of frameworks that I'm currently trying to validate and falsify by looking at many classes of future from things like biblical second coming theology to socialist theory to technological dreams to even white nationalism. I'm trying to figure out how the dreams of a different tomorrow operate at fundamental levels.

Please reach out and contact me if you want to talk about this. I'm really passionate about this study.

My email address is in my bio. If you replace the domain of Yahoo with Gmail I'll probably see it quicker.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#93

Post by janee » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

It's disheartening to read comments like this when I think of the graduates I've worked with over the years and the yearning for betterment and peer recognition I often see.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#94

Post by rusk » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #66

headmelted wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always endless meetings and poorly trained people that nevertheless earn well above the median wage so the incentive to improve onself is almost zero” This was actually painful to read because of how much truth there is in it.

I would say I have seen two.

I would say that there is challenging work out there if you look for it. I’ve studiously avoided the kinds of places described here and it has paid off for me.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#95

Post by krapp » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #48

scythe wrote: post #25

Why is it always space? Space technology requires lots of energy and our society is currently in the middle of realizing that our current way of getting energy is going to kill us. Of course we're not making large-scale investments in energy-intensive exploration. I wish EDS maglev, fusion power or quantum computing generated so much excitement, to say nothing of grid batteries, magnetocaloric heat pumps, or electric…

> Why is it always space? For the same reason it's always flying cars, despite how comically inefficient such vehicles are. The masses have an extaordinarily simplistic notion of what futuristic or advanced technology is or should look like. There are only a few well-trodden idols linked to what the future is supposed to look like. Hollywood has told them so; they've been told for many decades that it most certainly…

>They do what they're told. They believe what they're sold.

But you don't. You're not one of the tomatoes, you're a real person, huh?

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#96

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

mundo wrote: post #84

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

How much of this is due to venture capital? Like, if it were possible to make a billion dollars by investing in 100 plumbing companies even if 99 of them turn out to have been dumb, would plumbers make $250K out of college?

One can think of VC's as shooting canons full of money into the weeds and hoping they nail a unicorn.

Less flippantly VC funded companies succeed not because they hire more competent people but because they are vastly better funded than more normal competition.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#97

Post by tomaszs » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

I hope tech will be used to hack universe not people eventually

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#98

Post by FpUser » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #12

It sounds like people are forgetting the world before Facebook. Isolated, repressed locations, limited flow of information from tiny amounts of sources. The Connected-Information Age seems to have brought on some great advances and has been self-sustaining from a profitable perspective. Sure, the worlds' governments could have spent billions / trillions building bases on Mars or even terraforming it. But for what pur…

I live without Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc.

Still very much connected to the people. No problem finding information either.

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#99

Post by spamizbad » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

molteanu wrote: post #23

I've told myself countless times lately, that it is simply not possible for young graduates to come to work knowing basically nothing, surfing fb and youtube all day long and then go buy cars and going to Greece as their very first vacation. Something, somewhere, just stinks badly. I've literally never seen a challenging and well run project in almost 10 years in this business. Always late, always overstaffed, always…

It’s worth pointing out that things like the Moon Landing, which we now see as the pinnacle of human engineering achievement, was once widely regarded as a “Moondoggle”[1], sucking up billions of dollars with delays and cost-overruns around every corner.

Apollo 11 was probably a few key decisions away from being one of history’s greatest lessons in hubris.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/09/moond...

Re: You Promised Me Mars Colonies but I Got Facebook

#100

Post by chr1 » Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

undefined3840 wrote: post #90

I’m surprised this article is so upvoted. 1. The author took this nearly word for word from Thiel/Eric Weinstein, who have both discussed this point extensively, most recently on Weinstein’s podcast. 2. The author is using this click bait headline to discuss his own industry/company, and this looks like some content marketing piece.

It is a marketing piece. I liked the article because it did not go on complaining how we wasted our time on building useless things like facebook, but suggested possible reason why innovation in engineering things is slower than in engineering programs. And also suggested possible solution.