Time To Get Past Facebook And Invent A New Future • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by mseebach » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 11:57 AM UTC

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…

> 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 society or improving lives.

That is completely wrong from my experience. By the same logic the mobile phone didn't improve anything because you could already call people on land lines (and indeed, people argued exactly that). E-mail didn't improve anything, rather it was damaging, because people stopped writing letters.

Facebook has improved my life. A lot. It has enabled (not enhanced, enabled) loose but very enjoyable contact with acquaintances I hadn't seen for ten years. The light-weight way of staying in touch is perfect for keeping associated with my network in my former city after I moved. I get a steady stream of pics and status updates from my sister and her kids. People I've met travelling years ago suddenly mention they're coming through my city, and we catch up, or vice versa.

All of these COULD be facilitated using pre-Facebook technology, but pre-Facebook experiences suggests that they didn't.

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

#82

Post by moshthepitt » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:04 PM UTC

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…

That sounds like it would be fantastic!

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

#83

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:22 PM UTC

Social media does contribute to communications and economic growth, in the same way automobiles have. Social media also has real downsides, in much the same way.

That said, reading about SpaceX excites me much more than reading about Instagram.

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

#84

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:25 PM UTC

thorin_2 wrote: post #10

Why can't the next area of innovation be in education? I’m not talking solely about the transition from print to digital, but rather a complete reset on education with technology at its core rather than at the periphery? Rethink the status quo, with no sacred cows (teachers, buses, grades, testing, - even classrooms all up for grabs). Imagine tablet devices or similar technology that provide individualized, adaptive…

Imagine applications that blend multiple subjects (math, science, history), presenting the material not using your standard “preach at you” teaching technique, but instead using role-based or video game style interactive learning that makes the kid WANT to study, gets excited about the subject.

Etoys in Squeak. Alan Kay has some presentations about them.

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

#85

Post by stcredzero » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:29 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #51

sparknlaunch12 wrote: post #39

Is the new future offline? We have grown attached to our electronic devices and online friends. Maybe we need to step back and think about going back?

Why?

_why?

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

#86

Post by hxa7241 » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:37 PM UTC

> More money has got to change hands.

No, quite the opposite. If you really want to be bold about inventing the future, money is one of the things that needs to be replaced.

The internet is, in a general sense, a technology for cooperation -- for organising collective activities through shared information. Money is really just an information channel for doing that too, but it is now comparatively obsolete.

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

#87

Post by nacker » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 12:56 PM UTC

moocow01 wrote: post #3

Its very difficult for me to ascertain if its just me or the following is a growing sentiment... I'm not wowed by hardly anything that comes out of consumer internet tech anymore. Before anyone gets out a pitchfork I have actively contributed and worked on products in the past that are part of the behemoth of services/apps/sites etc that have become mundane to me so I deserve my own criticism as well. But the majorit…

"the 'new' things like 3D printing, robotics, computer vision, etc as well as seek out applications towards other industries (education, health, food, etc.)"

Totally agree. We have reached screen saturation. All the text and pictures we want. (We've had audio saturation for a long time.) The future is going to be all about machines that interact with us in the real, physical world, whether for war, state oppression, work or entertainment. Calling them robots is soon going to seem quaint.

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

#88

Post by lars » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 1:13 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #46

lars wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semantic web has one huge problem imo: There was/is typically zero incentive to semantically encode data. As shown by things like IBMs Watson, you're better off extracting sentence semantics with NLP than by hoping someone has encoded the data for you. Another thing is that huge ontological databases actually exist, it's just that no one seems to be able to use them for anything useful. Knowledge bases and formal…

Largely agree. What saddens me is that the extracted semantics are not apparently being shared or exchanged automatically, which is holding us back. On the upside, I remember the view that mass internet usage couldn't take off because open protocols didn't provide sufficient economic incentives for private actors, but that turned out OK. would be quite interested in hearing more about your startup if you want to post…

No prob, I'll send you an email when I get home from work.

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

#89

Post by chadmalik » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 1:21 PM UTC

patrickk wrote: post #76

shadowmint wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aug…

Add Google self-driving car to that list. Reducing alcohol and speed related deaths to zero within our lifetime, getting rid of car parks (fleets of autonomous vehicles move onto the next customer), cheaper delivery of any physical product currently delivered by road, reduced CO2 emissions (cars know when they need servicing), more productive workforces- you can sleep during your commute, the list of benefits is mind…

The whole self-driving car thing seems insane to me. How about, good public transportation? I don't see the point of people sitting in individual metal boxes when buses and the like do the job much more effectively. The real problem is with how we build communities in the US, spread out and car dependent. Walkable communities are a much better way to do things, which means increased density.

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

#90

Post by mattquinn » Thu, Apr 19, 2012, 1:35 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #66

mattquinn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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"

The publication date was August 4, 1993. Not to say it's irrelevant, but alot has changed since then.

We are all going to disagree about how much tech is too much in education. On the other hand, very few disagree that tech has no place in hospitals, the enterprise, supply chain management, etc. That alone illustrates to me how ridiculous it is to treat education as a space needing a "reset."