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Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

theatlantic.com

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Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#61

Post by mladenkovacevic »

hippee-lee wrote: post #58
unimpressive wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I may have sounded sarcastic, even dismissive. (If you read it in your head with the right tones.) I actually ask because I love hearing about what people think the future should be like. The hope is that if I ask enough people my own vision will change significantly. So while I don't necessarily expect people to have something in mind, I always hope they do.

I think you ask a great question. I'll bite. Here is what I have in mind that will change my world. Small data. My data. A 1999 google like interface into an index of me: my email, my documents, images and video that I've collected. Nice to haves would be a copy of the various conversations I have had on third party social media sites. This index should be set up in a way that I can easily include a copy of it in my…

Cool. That sounds like the crystals Superman uses to learn about Krypton and his parents.

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#64

Post by shadowmint »

unimpressive wrote: post #55
rohern wrote: post #52

This article is spot on in its thesis, though not always in its arguments. Everyone is convinced -- because the people who work in marketing are happy because they can sell ads -- that social media is an important thing. It is not. Social media is people doing what they were already doing, only more often and anywhere. Flirting with girls, talking with friends, etc. Making these activities digital is not changing soc…

>People often go to bed regretting not doing what they could have done when instead they were on Facebook and Twitter and [insert the names of 90% of the startups you have heard of]. I know I have. Many more times than I care to admit. >it is that too many companies are not doing things worthy of hackers. Excellent. And since I always ask this question of people who lament the status quo: What did you have in mind?

Make ubiquitous computing a reality (Raspberry PI is a step in this direction).

Make personal analytics useful (something like http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/09/stephen-wolfram-reveals-t..., but in a way that is actually useful to normal people).

Link the offline and online into one seamless reality (google glass)

If I had to dream about the future and what it should be we're aiming for, it'd be joint universal augmented network access. I want to live in a world like this one --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denno_Coil

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#65

Post by mattquinn »

heynk wrote: post #49
mattquinn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of issues with what you just posted. Perhaps the biggest is enforcing a division between "best teachers" and "run-of-the-mill teachers" into a corporate project management of sorts. I'm not sure where you work, but just imagine if someone deemed you a "run-of-the-mill" employee and relegated you to watching people interact with tablets all day. Some areas of life require a delicate moderation of technolo…

>Some areas of life require a delicate moderation of technology, and education is one of them. Care to explain why? The GP had some valid points and your rebuttal is that he or she 'hasn't done their research,' without making a single valid point. The metaphor about 'watching people interact with tablets' is not at all what GP mentioned. He suggested that teachers design what interactions take place, and take a proac…

> "He suggested that teachers design what interactions take place..."

This is exactly my point. Those who work with software/tech/etc often trivialize the relationship between software and people who hold completely different societal roles. No matter how intuitive you make an application, no matter how effective you seem to think your application enhances learning, there will always be a vast number of people (in this case, teachers) who have not the time, nor the desire, to "design" a set of "interactions" for their student.

Are there effective teaching aids available for tablets? Yes. Does that translate to a need for technology-guided learning in more aspects of education? Absolutely not.

The OP talks about "a complete reset on education with technology at its core." I stand by my point; this is a dangerous idea. And you don't have to believe me, most any teacher will tell you this is a bad idea. Teacher flexibility and intuition is (usually) right; software isn't going to magically determine a child's academic strengths and weaknesses.

Education is not some cookie-cutter problem you can fix with a well-designed app.

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#66

Post by ThomPete »

mattquinn wrote: post #65
heynk wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some areas of life require a delicate moderation of technology, and education is one of them. Care to explain why? The GP had some valid points and your rebuttal is that he or she 'hasn't done their research,' without making a single valid point. The metaphor about 'watching people interact with tablets' is not at all what GP mentioned. He suggested that teachers design what interactions take place, and take a proac…

> "He suggested that teachers design what interactions take place..." This is exactly my point. Those who work with software/tech/etc often trivialize the relationship between software and people who hold completely different societal roles. No matter how intuitive you make an application, no matter how effective you seem to think your application enhances learning, there will always be a vast number of people (in th…

Read Seymor Papert "mindstorms"

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#67

Post by guelo »

Sure there are a lot of smart people wasting away figuring out how to sell ads more efficiently. But I think we're still fairly reliably being wowed several times a year. Right now Kickstarter is the big wow for a lot of people, they're doing some real revolutionary work on the future of business and work. With Etsy being a good wow along the same lines before that. Obviously the iPad is making explosive entries into all kinds of industries which are being revolutionized for the 2nd or 3rd time in the last 20 years. And this guy talks like the iPhone happened ages ago, it was only 5 years ago, 4 years since the amazements started emanating from the app store.

I'm not too worried, change is accelerating and the wows will keep on coming. Five years from now should look more different from today then today looks compared to 2007. The main dangers are monopolistic predator companies, walled gardens, and government intrusion. Other than that, we will continue being blown away for years to come.

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#68

Post by yonasb »

hkmurakami wrote: post #17
yonasb wrote: post #15

I don't like these "where's the innovation" posts, too negative. There's lots of exciting software being built. I will however admit that, in general, the Glass Project was the most exciting thing I've seen in a while. So maybe this is really about the lack of innovation in the hardware space

If it is the case that innovation in HW is lagging behind innovation in SW at this time, then it would seem that investors have something to do with the phenomenon, not just the entrepreneurs. When I read the line below today, it was alarming to me: >Then he hit a roadblock. A big one. Migicovsky couldn’t raise more money. Few investors were interested in betting on a hardware startup, or dealing with the headaches t…

Totally agree. Not sure if that's the case across the board with VC's but it does make sense.

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#69

Post by thomasdavis »

rohern wrote: post #52

This article is spot on in its thesis, though not always in its arguments. Everyone is convinced -- because the people who work in marketing are happy because they can sell ads -- that social media is an important thing. It is not. Social media is people doing what they were already doing, only more often and anywhere. Flirting with girls, talking with friends, etc. Making these activities digital is not changing soc…

Brillant post my friend! I highly recommend people read Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Regardless if you're a communist hater, you should really have perspective about all aspects of your life, the economic system you live in being one of them.

Re: Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future

#70

Post by swalsh »

I think there's a new paradigm in the making, many people are talking about it... but it's young.

The internet of stuff is next!

A lot of the building blocks are in place, personally I think Arduino is a really big component that is driving the revolution and Kickstarter is providing a surprisingly good platform for funding it. However there's still a few missing components. One of the goals of LTE is to power this new network, but existing carrier business models don't seem appropriate. As a consumer I'm really not interested in paying $20 (or more!) a month for each my fridge, and toaster, and television, and door to be connected. Light Squared was a promising push in the right direction, which unfortunately failed.

Along the same lines of networking though, I think there's a lot of really good opportunities for low end hardware. Qualcomm dominates the market in LTE chipsets, but good luck getting access to the developer stuff as an indie user. API's tying all these components together will be essential.

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