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A Magical Time to Start a Movement
11–20 of 36 posts
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#12"The government ... disrupted by a group of people building something on their laptops in Silicon Valley." Right below this quote from your blog, in the "From around the web" section: "Obamacare could soon cause massive layoffs." I think it's a magical time to get people wasting time on their phones, maybe solve some minor efficiency problems around the edges of Obamacare but SV is the worst possible choice to solve…
I haven't read OP's piece yet, but I agree with @dennybritz that there are plenty of us here in SV who care about solving the big problems.
For example we just launched Prime, an iPhone app that allows you to download your medical record from any doctor and share health activity with friends and family. http://stayinyourprime.com. We're not the only ones in healthcare. There's also Practice Fusion, drchrono, DoctorBase, and countless others.
And on the education side there's Inkling, for example. And on the banking side there's Simple (though they're actually based in Portland). And of course YC famously backed Watsi. Maybe you have different examples in mind of what big problems are but it does seem to me that as we are seeing more startups overall that means we're seeing more startups addressing bigger/more meaningful problems.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Building a world with technology in mind means that the role of humans will shift away from traditional positions to something different. In the long run, this may create more jobs that it makes go away. Unfortunately, as John Maynard Keynes famously observed, "in the long run we are all dead." ( http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes )
That just explains the appeal of Keynesian economics to corporations and the government. The problem is that we kinda need to worry about the long term affects of things, because not doing so is what got us in our current mess with the environment. Dealing with the short term is really appealing, but it typically has the worst long term affects.
Only dealing with an indefinite long term is the same as not dealing at all. The fact is, during that entire indefinite period, people will be experiencing life in the present.
The consequences of the means have to be justified by the benefits of the ends.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#14This is magical thinking. The reality is that established players will use their positions to buy out, advertise out and just generally squeeze out any threats to their business.
Bell and IBM show that this does not always work. MS may be the next example in ~10 years.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#15Yeah, We'll learn how governments magically turned the 90s internet dream of anarchistic freedom into Big Brother.
And how network analysis, in real time, can instantly identify the core members of any "movement", and if "inappropriate" quickly stomp on them.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#16>Hotels and taxi companies fear the sharing economy, Airbnb, Uber and Lyft.
I thought the sharing economy was bittorrent and Free Software. Aren't AirBnB, Uber, and Lyft part of the home piecework subcontractor temp-for-life economy?
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#17It's a magical time to have been born in a western country, but then that's been true for a while now. By "every individual wields great power" you probably mean those with access to technology, relative peace, and education. War hasn't gone away we just don't fight them at home anymore.
Quality of life is up just about everywhere else as well over the last several decades.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#18>With MOOCs we no longer need universities to educate people.
I am not convinced of this. I think MOOCs are great and certainly a game changer for domains like computer science. But there's lots of domains that I know nothing about that I am not convinced I could master via an online course (e.g., biotech or anything else that requires expensive equipment).
Even where MOOCs are the best answer, isn't the best provider of a MOOC going to be a university? Maybe just what we think of as a university will change.
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#19[deleted]
Re: A Magical Time to Start a Movement
#20>With MOOCs we no longer need universities to educate people. I am not convinced of this. I think MOOCs are great and certainly a game changer for domains like computer science. But there's lots of domains that I know nothing about that I am not convinced I could master via an online course (e.g., biotech or anything else that requires expensive equipment). Even where MOOCs are the best answer, isn't the best provide…
Not only can you not master some things from a course online, but a college education is as much if not more about status and a paper degree as it is about the education you receive.