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What Happened to the Future?

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Re: What Happened to the Future?

#41

Post by btcoal »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #39
sahillavingia wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually disagree. Facebook has improved my life by a ton .

How?

Facebook has improved my life as well.

I went to high school in one city, college in one 1,000 miles away. Have since worked in cities all over the world. I don't know how I would manage to keep even a tenuous grasp on all the connections I have with people in these different places without Facebook. Admittedly, these are not and never will be deep social bonds I am maintaing, but that is hardly the point. There is value in maintaining a large web of shallow social connections. Facebook helps me do this.

Moreover, whether or not Facebook has improved the life of me or anyone I care about is irrelevant to an objective evaluation of the site's value. I could make the same case for anti-malaria drugs.

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#42

Post by btcoal »

cleaver wrote: post #22

its;dr (interface too shitty; didn't read)

Well then you may have done yourself a disservice because:

a. the quality of presentation of content is independent of the quality of the information of content; and

b. text that is harder to read may be easier to remember: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#45

Post by moultano »

One important aspect of these problems is that they aren't going to be solved by people who know only how to code. These are opportunities for mechanical engineers, biologists, statisticians, materials scientists, physicists ...

For many of them the research would have to be so speculative that it would be hard to imagine them occurring outside of an academic research lab. For a startup to tackle one of these, the bones of the technology would have to already be there.

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#47

Post by zb »

> Not all technology is created equal: there is a difference between Pong and the Concorde

Yes, Pong was simply a clever design making use of existing technology that made shirtloads of money for a bunch of people and spawned entire industries. Whereas Concorde - a "real technological development" - was a giant money pit fed from government slush funds for decades, punctuated only by occasional lethal consequences for its passengers and bystanders. (Not to mention that it was a technological cul-de-sac.)

Remind me, which one was it they want to be investing in? Because it sure sounds like they're saying Concorde. Am I misinterpreting?

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#48

Post by DannoHung »

william42 wrote: post #20
chrismealy wrote: post #14

Enough with the flying cars! That was never a good idea.

Agreed. I'm not a big fan of Twitter, but flying cars don't exist for a reason. Now self-driving cars, those are interesting. Guess who's working on them ? Google.

Self-flying cars?

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#49

Post by xist »

sahillavingia wrote: post #36
thinkcomp wrote: post #13

It's a good essay. The only problem is that it's Peter Thiel behind it. The problem isn't just that "we got 140 characters." The problem is that Peter Thiel asked for it by investing in and therefore promulgating Mark Zuckerberg's vision of ubiquitous irrelevance. I think he's right that VC is destroying itself by investing in what I have often referred to as trivial nonsense, but he and his firm are part of the prob…

I actually disagree. Facebook has improved my life by a ton .

Has it improved it enough to the point that you would pay for it? For me, definitely not. At best it's a convenience.

Re: What Happened to the Future?

#50

Post by thaumaturgy »

thinkcomp wrote: post #13

It's a good essay. The only problem is that it's Peter Thiel behind it. The problem isn't just that "we got 140 characters." The problem is that Peter Thiel asked for it by investing in and therefore promulgating Mark Zuckerberg's vision of ubiquitous irrelevance. I think he's right that VC is destroying itself by investing in what I have often referred to as trivial nonsense, but he and his firm are part of the prob…

> I'm doing serious work and my company has been rejected by sixty (that's six-zero) VC firms in the past five years.

I just want to burn some HN points here to tell you that you're not alone, and that there are a lot of other people out there that are terribly frustrated by this.

Investors are primarily in it to make money. They're optimizing for returns. When you have a choice between a company that will spend relatively little capital and has a chance to make a lot of money, $5 at a time, from millions of people, in a short period of time, and then get sold to some other megacorporation at a valuation that's detached from reality, versus a company with higher capital needs and a 20-year roadmap to becoming an industry heavyweight ... well, you choose the first one.

The horde of "business consultants" (coaches, advisors, what-have-you) aren't much better. I went through a period of intense naivete that involved trying those people out. I would try anything that might have a chance at accelerating my business. I have never before been charged so much to receive so little truly useful advice, from so many people so hell-bent on violating the very first rule of problem solving ("understand the problem"), and so inclined to insult me or my goals. They're all just doing the same thing as the VCs, but at smaller, pitiable scales: they're focusing first-and-foremost on making a buck.

Sometimes the situation leaves me feeling bitter. As a hopeless idealist and an obsessive problem-solver, I can't help but to habitually look at the world around me and see in its place the potential for the future that so many people with resources claim to be interested in while being interested first and foremost in making a quick profit.

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