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This Tech Bubble Is Different

businessweek.com

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Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#11

Post by bad_user » 

    The best minds of my generation are thinking 
    about how to make people click ads
Best minds of any generation have always thought about ways to make money.

That doesn't mean that the world doesn't benefit from side-effects. Information is at your fingertips because of companies like Google and Yahoo. Staying connected is easier then before because of companies like Facebook and Twitter.

And speaking about infrastructure; since 2000 lots of cool things happened, like cheap cloud-computing (EC2, Rackspace) or open-source projects that can kick start your company straight at Google-scale if needed (Hadoop). Not to mention research papers that happened because of these companies.

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#12

Post by [deleted] »

bad_user wrote: post #11

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads Best minds of any generation have always thought about ways to make money. That doesn't mean that the world doesn't benefit from side-effects. Information is at your fingertips because of companies like Google and Yahoo. Staying connected is easier then before because of companies like Facebook and Twitter. And speaking about infrastructu…

[deleted]

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#13

Post by [deleted] »

necrecious wrote: post #4

The headline is terrible. The idea that much of the value generated in startups is by quants optimizing numbers is interesting. The critique that web companies don't leave a technical legacy is not really valid. Most businesses don't leave a legacy.

[deleted]

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#14

Post by edoloughlin »

Humanity does seem to have a predilection to devoting its brightest minds to unproductive activities. How much better would the world be today if the hot job of early medieval times was medicine instead of producing manuscripts? Science instead of theology? Science instead of stock market analysis? Just repeating a pattern...

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#15

Post by bruce511 »

turoczy wrote: post #3
ares2012 wrote: post #2

Yes, that's true. It's 2011, not 2006 (Web 2.0 bubble) or 1999 (Dotcom bubble). Totally different.

I'll admit. The headline belies the actual content. Which wasn't so flippant or off-putting.

"This bubble is always different"... Right up to the moment when the people involved lose everything and start eying their office windows and wondering if they open...

Bubbles exist because human nature is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Not every tech company collapsed in 2000 - but the weak ones surely went to the wall. Those with solid business models, and profitability are still going strong. Not everyone will fail this time around, but it looks like serious money will be lost.

As long as the companies going under are pre-IPO the ones most affected will be VC's. After IPO it'll be Joe Public. Thanks to Sarbannes-Oxley there's far fewer companies going public though, so perhaps that's at least one good thing to come from that ill-advised adventure.

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#18

Post by dougabug »

"Hammerbacher looked around Silicon Valley at companies like his own, Google (GOOG), and Twitter, and saw his peers wasting their talents. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads," he says. 'That sucks.'"

Man, I love that quote. Advertising is a pestilence. The real problem with ads is that they invariably take the form of insincere communication. As such, they are fundamentally at odds with the open and thoughtful (on a good day) nature of the Internet.

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#19

Post by mironathetin »

bad_user wrote: post #11

The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads Best minds of any generation have always thought about ways to make money. That doesn't mean that the world doesn't benefit from side-effects. Information is at your fingertips because of companies like Google and Yahoo. Staying connected is easier then before because of companies like Facebook and Twitter. And speaking about infrastructu…

"Best minds of any generation have always thought about ways to make money."

Sorry no!. Some of the very best still do science.

Re: This Tech Bubble Is Different

#20

Post by Dn_Ab »

edoloughlin wrote: post #14

Humanity does seem to have a predilection to devoting its brightest minds to unproductive activities. How much better would the world be today if the hot job of early medieval times was medicine instead of producing manuscripts? Science instead of theology? Science instead of stock market analysis? Just repeating a pattern...

This post is not fair to history. First, many theologians of old were first rate thinkers. Although much of their work was practical (philosophy in this case heh) they made contributions to logic, physics and uhm philosophy. Perhaps you have heard of William of Ockham or Thomas Aquinas? As for manuscripts, this was before the printing press so making manuscripts was vital to knowledge spreading. Note that in this time Fibonacci and Copernicus lived.

Finally, although things were slow in Europe, during this time the arabs, persians and indians layed the foundations of and invented some of the greatest inventions in the history of the universe including: positional decimal numbering, zero, and algebra. As well as furthering calculus, geometry, astronomy and number theory. Arabic medicine also maintained and made some contributions to the state of the art of greek and roman times.

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Arabic_m...

http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Zero.htm...

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