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What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

cdixon.org

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Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#111

Post by phil »

jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision.

The post list stuff like 3D printing (i.e. decentralized/democratized manufacturing). If just that one technology becomes widespread (and it's well on the way) it's going to radically alter the world. All your stuff is going to be made differently. There will be different constraints on how you can treat your stuff and who can decide what it looks like, and that's going to change how you feel about most of the things you own. How much broader a vision could you possibly ask for?

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#113

Post by javajosh »

Create wrote: post #97

"As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of networks. RCA’s president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Arm…

Stories like this make me so mad. It's just so unfair to Armstrong. And unfairness, in my view, isn't some abstraction: fairness has real value. When we see or read stories about RCA and Armstrong[1], or the inventor of the wind-shield wiper, Robert Kearns[2] it's tempting to become resigned to this fate. Innovation is not rewarded. Do not try.

When the anger passes, the harsh light of reason prevails. Clearly, an inventor cannot succeed in disrupting large, powerful entities without friends. Innovation on it's own is naked, vulnerable, and weak. Inventors must trade the strength of their idea for the support of others: those with connections to finance, government, and the big-businesses that will be your competitors. It is access to these kinds of networks that give (some) VC's their power.

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong [2] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#114

Post by outside1234 »

return0 wrote: post #77
unimpressive wrote: post #34

Why is this the top voted article on HN? It's extremely short, makes a point that has already been stated elsewhere at least once, and it's entirely vapid. (See: Paul Graham essays.)

Because people up-voted it.

And its Chris Dixon.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#115

Post by Create »

javajosh wrote: post #113
Create wrote: post #97

"As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of networks. RCA’s president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Arm…

Stories like this make me so mad. It's just so unfair to Armstrong. And unfairness, in my view, isn't some abstraction: fairness has real value. When we see or read stories about RCA and Armstrong[1], or the inventor of the wind-shield wiper, Robert Kearns[2] it's tempting to become resigned to this fate. Innovation is not rewarded. Do not try. When the anger passes, the harsh light of reason prevails. Clearly, an in…

High Stakes, No Prisoners is a sharp, brilliant insider's account of the way Silicon Valley really works: the sharks, powerful incumbents, and old-boy networks who play hardball all the time and the geniuses who make the products that have changed the world.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#116

Post by egsec »

There is a difference between a hobby and business, according to the IRS and according to investors. You could also invent something awesome, and not make any money, but the world loves it. You might still get something rewarding out of that feeling.

Start a business to make money, but start a hobby to explore and enjoy. It is also possible you will start one way and the end up on the other side (biz vs hob)

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#117

Post by ajju »

What do you guys do on weekends?

I used to fiddle with some robotics (Lego Mindstorms and my Roomba) until I started InstantCab. A bunch of my smarter friends seem to be working on applying machine learning to firehoses (http://www.maaya.com/ and http://technicalelvis.com/blog/category/twitter_mining/), or on hardware projects.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#118

Post by jamesbritt »

logn wrote: post #84
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

Let's all pat ourselves on the back with a fluffy blog post about how jolly wonderful we are. In about 10 years everyone else will be doing the same. Just kidding. Every profession I have even a passing familiarity with is absolutely chockers with self-congratulatory fluff. And it's usually hilarious to the outsiders who can see the narrowness of a profession's vision. Out of the professions I've seen, who have been…

This isn't fluff. It's saying that what you love doing (if you're not getting paid) might be the future. If the activity has enough value on its own to be worthwhile without immediate monetary reward, then it's a good bet there's something valuable about your activity that will ultimately be recognized by the market. It's not much different from investing. If we see company X investing in space mining even though it'…

If the activity has enough value on its own to be worthwhile without immediate monetary reward, then it's a good bet there's something valuable about your activity that will ultimately be recognized by the market.

Where is the evidence for that? Where are the broad data that looks at what has been done over, say, the last 20 years and examines what has been recognized by the market and what has not?

You can't just look at things that we now know to be successful, you have to (some how, if even possible) look at what was done and never became more than a hobby.

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#119

Post by krallja »

Create wrote: post #97

"As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of networks. RCA’s president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Arm…

As bad as it is, sometime I really enjoy reading articles like this on Cracked: http://www.cracked.com/article_20286_6-inventors-who-changed...

Re: What the smartest people do on the weekend, everyone else will do in 10 years

#120

Post by philwelch »

frabcus wrote: post #50
philwelch wrote: post #44

Whatever facile point this article had, it immediately blew it by saying Bitcoin and NoSQL are the wave of the future.

Bitcoin itself may have any number of problems - it is though, the first algorithm that allows truly distributed ownership of objects in a network. I think that changes the game totally. I don't yet know what application of it will go mainstream first. Agreed about NoSQL. Its vision is too narrow (scaling within one organisation, rather than truly distributed, syncing, forkable data)

Bitcoin's a cool hack for sure, but most of the hype surrounding it is just the same old goldbug nonsense.
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