21–30 of 124 posts
Day in and day out there are articles on here talking about how the smartest people "optimize" their time as if just relaxing and doing stuff with your friends/family is something only the unwashed masses do. Frankly I like my weekends a lot better when I'm not subjecting myself to "time optimization" or hobbies that take over my life.
Tech hobby trends need to conspire with other trends in business and society (and also have the right timing) to become a future industry and a widely adopted technology.
Two counterexamples off the top of my head: MUDs and ham radio.
I think the original "seed" of the hobby is just one building block needed (of many).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is usenet not the precursor to Reddit? And the first blogs were certainly hobbiests. look at BBS zines as one example.
> Is usenet not the precursor to Reddit? Debatable. Usenet is decentralized as opposed to being dependent on a single bank of computers and beholden to a single group of owners.
I think this is, on the whole, probably false. There are a lot of things the smartest people do on the weekend which will never catch on, because there is not much of a business case behind them. Not everything interesting is monetizable. One example: a lot of the smartest computer scientists of the 1960s were really into algorithmic art as a side-project hobby. Was algorithmic art mainstream in the 1970s? No. Hell,…
The sentiment is that tomorrow's markets and innovations comes from people that are on the edges, fringes, and seemingly wasting their time. Everyone loves and applauds the idea of innovation in abstract, but few people recognize it while it's happening, even those in tech. Usually, it's written off as being non-monetizable, too much of a toy to do actual work, "why would anyone do that?", "I don't have any friends t…
Day in and day out there are articles on here talking about how the smartest people "optimize" their time as if just relaxing and doing stuff with your friends/family is something only the unwashed masses do. Frankly I like my weekends a lot better when I'm not subjecting myself to "time optimization" or hobbies that take over my life.
Awesome. But hardly the main point for the OP.
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 the widest thinkers outside of their own field?
So far: lawyers. I'm serious.
I see where Chris is getting at, but he's not generalizing it well. I think a better rule of thumb would be: Look at what new and upcoming technologies people with large domain expertise are excited about. Those technologies will probably be included in business practices within that domain in the near future. Edit: It's also a rather self-fulfilling prophecy. Obviously industry leaders will pave the way for their pe…