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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

#91

Post by josh33 »

hxa7241 wrote: post #86

> 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.

Money is a receipt given for value created. I think you mean to say that dollars and pesos should be replaced, which I agree with to a point. However, giving up money, to a government, is like giving up sovereignty. How could a government fund wars or welfare if they couldn't print money.

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

#92

Post by username3 »

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…

The Promise of Computer-Based Instruction

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3862903

Imagine a responsive system that negotiates the route between your present-state knowledge and skills and your (or your school’s or your job’s…) learning goals. Such a system requires a profile of your current knowledge and skills, a map of the declarative and procedural knowledge and skills that fulfill the learning goals, and a logic engine to reconcile the two.

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

#93

Post by laglad »

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…

All great ideas. I've always thought that the boldest and most innovative education experiments will end up being run in the developing world (Africa, Asia, South America). The developed world has centralized institutions that provide a decent education at astronomical costs to its citizens. But these centralized institutions have special interests and look to slow down the innovation to a manageable pace for them, instead of serving the best educational experience for the students. As Larry Lessig's refrain states, "The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it."

The high demand for education due to complete institutional failures in the developing world and the reduced cost of learning and coordination that the Internet provides will make students there extremely receptive to new ways of learning as soon as it becomes affordable. Sufficient penetration of the mobile phone and the tablet computer in these populations will be the vehicle for this change. I wonder if this penetration could put some of these developing countries in a position to leapfrog old ways of learning and ramp up both enthusiasm around learning and skill acquisition.

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

#94

Post by a3camero »

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…

Subways/trains do this! You don't need self-driving cars to make this world a reality!

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

#95

Post by patrickk »

a3camero wrote: post #94
patrickk wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Subways/trains do this! You don't need self-driving cars to make this world a reality!

Subways/trains don't collect you from the front door of your house and deliver you to the exact spot that you want to go to.

Conceptually, I think this is similar to the last-mile broadband problem[1] - it's not economical to lay fiber to the customer's home unless the customer lives in an urban/reasonably densely populated area. Similarly, if you want to go from transport hub to transport hub (bus/rail station, airport etc.) that's no problem, but getting from the transport hub to your home ranges from expensive and awkward to impossible, depending on how far you live from the transport hub.

Self-driving cars solve this problem. Who cares if you have a 100 mile commute, if you can snooze all the way? Just order the car for a set time every morning to allow enough time for the drive and go back to sleep on the way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile

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

#96

Post by phodo »

Here is one simple attempt to explain the value of many of the startups that are otherwise dismissed by such naysayers, although coming from a heavy tech background I am the first to admit that some of these startups are incremental and featurettes at best.

We are in the age of sensors and A/D conversion. Many (not all) startups today do operate at the app layer... they are web / mobile apps etc. They produce tools that enable us to consume and produce info... at scale... we're talking millions of people are slowly but surely doing the analog-to-digital conversion for a future. At a mass scale, the result will be x,y,z,t,status,interest,social,connection connections/graphs for many things across many verticals. Privacy issues aside (they cannot be ignored, but bare with me for a second), the end result is a real-time layer on the world that exists in the digital domain, not the analog one. We are creating a world of installing "sensors" through market forces.

There is a step function in innovation (a new S-curve, if you will) that will occur at some point, that will be dependent on the world where things are digitized (the one we are creating now) in order to unlock innovation further. Not just technically, but from an adoption/diffusion/comfort level in society. We are going through that now... so the outcome ain't so bleak. At the end of this particular journey (call it a bubble, call it something else), we will have 1 billion+ people who a) are comfortable with sensors / digitizing their stuff and themselves b) and are doing it.

We are converging on a dominant design of what a digitized world looks like, through market forces! And in more recent years, the big data techniques emerging that will also be pushed by market forces. The best way to think about that is the following: In the ABSENCE of the incremental innovation (instagram of x, pinterest for y), I can imagine many future business and technology plans saying: we would like to build this technology, but it is not feasible because it requires a world where everyone is a sensor. Or even better, our new technology can change the world, but it assumes that people / things are digitized.

tl;dr: current crop of startups are creating sensors for big data and other processes. This can create future innovation opps that leverage this big data in new and profound ways. The absence of such startups is a blocker for that future class of innovation.

Hope not too incoherent... typing this at 30,000 feet in a cramped seat.

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

#97

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

I went to school to become an engineer (I'm 24) because I thought that computers and the internet were going to make invention and innovation possible even for people who did not work for industrial laboratories. Maybe the hugely reduced barriers to entry into the technology sector that resulted from cheap computers and good programming tools would lead young and eager people of brilliance to found ambitious companies to finally -- aren't we all sick of being exasperated by the mediocrity of culture and politics in the past 20 years? -- steer human life into better modes of existence and a new frontier of boldness. Sure, the internet cannot do this all on its own, but is such a powerful and promising tool, that maybe it would start things.

I hate to sound all Statler-and-Waldorf on you, but DO-HO-HO-HO!!!!!

Technology is not going to change our social system. Our technology is fine and dandy. Our social system is increasingly shitty.

So the real question is: how do you take anti-profitable activities like fixing our social system (ie: wealth redistribution) and make them profitable?

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

#98

Post by eli_gottlieb »

pm wrote: post #71
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…

All the companies I know, from local dev shops to funded startups to public behemoths, are hurting for good hackers. Even though there may be too many companies not doing things worthy of hackers, why aren't worthy hackers gravitating towards those companies that are worthy? I agree though, we need more of these companies. I think of all the things that we could be doing, and I remember how I used to want to change t…

Hackers aren't gravitating because hiring is broken.

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

#99

Post by eli_gottlieb »

patrickk wrote: post #95
a3camero wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subways/trains do this! You don't need self-driving cars to make this world a reality!

Subways/trains don't collect you from the front door of your house and deliver you to the exact spot that you want to go to. Conceptually, I think this is similar to the last-mile broadband problem[1] - it's not economical to lay fiber to the customer's home unless the customer lives in an urban/reasonably densely populated area. Similarly, if you want to go from transport hub to transport hub (bus/rail station, airp…

More particularly, subways drive up real-estate values, thus pushing people out of areas served by subways -- unless you convince the government to spread subway access universally throughout the entire sufficiently-populated area.

Compare Europe and New York's Tri-State-Area to Boston or BART.

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

#100

Post by eli_gottlieb »

josh33 wrote: post #91
hxa7241 wrote: post #86

> 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.

Money is a receipt given for value created. I think you mean to say that dollars and pesos should be replaced, which I agree with to a point. However, giving up money, to a government, is like giving up sovereignty. How could a government fund wars or welfare if they couldn't print money.

No, money is a receipt given for rivalrous, excludable property owned, and then sold off, or for excludable services rendered.

We thus have an economic system that hugely neglects the provision of commons and public goods.

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