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We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

christophmccann.com

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Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#71

Post by dionidium »

dionidium wrote: post #67
pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

But I don't know many people who think that we need to spend all our time tackling the world's biggest problems. It's hard to see what the point of such a thing would even be. Isn't the whole point of solving the world's problems that we'll have more time to waste on frivolous pursuits like the Yo app?

Also, this attitude is an example of the well-debunked fallacy that time and effort are fungible and/or exchangeable goods (i.e. that the creators of Yo could just as easily have been solving more difficult problems instead).

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#72

Post by atmosx »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

> [...] "energy, food, water, health, education" [...]

I guess 'food' stands for 'poverty', in this list. Seriously though, does anyone believe that these problems can be solved by an 'app'?

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#73

Post by cacainmycafe »

Maybe, Chris, me old mucker, you meant well in this article. You wanted to point out that there are some real, hard, difficult, real-life problems, things that affect people in large numbers, and that it would be great if people worked on those.

I would agree with that sentiment. A million more chat apps, a million more web frameworks, a million more crappy-bird game clones, twatter, farcebook, none of those solve real-life hard problems.

The difficult part then, is how to make solving those problems attractive. Money? Fame? Something else? A good feeling in the stomach and soul, knowing you have contributed to helping? That is the harder part. People are complicated, their motivations often less so, but hidden away beneath complications and layers of deceit, so as to often obscure them.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#74

Post by pdabbadabba »

sterculiusx wrote: post #68
pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

"Totalitarian"? From the article: "We need to think big, see the real problems that are out there and go solve them. For my part, I hope to stick by this philosophy and play my part."

Well, right. That's why I wrote the sentence prior to what you've quoted. I'm not sure I understand quite what the article's point is. The part you quoted sounds very live-and-let-live. But then there's this:

> it saddens me that some of the worlds most driven, focused, intelligent and inspiring individuals don't focus their time on solving the real problems our society faces. It may well be that Yo has the user engagement and growth that justifies such an investment on purely those terms, but, to me, that is a narrow outlook.

> I therefore find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving these problems, instead put their efforts into something like Yo.

I grant that this is not exactly boot-on-the-throat language. But it's hard to read these remarks about what "saddens" McCann as anything other than (passive-aggressively) prescriptive.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#76

Post by Luff »

There are significantly bigger problems than those, but if you want to make money you have to solve problems that rich[0] people have, which mainly seems to be boredom.

The people with the biggest problems are the people with the least money. You can't save them with apps, but you could help them with money made by making apps. Not that most will though, if they ever make it big.

[0] Rich is a relative term. Got enough to eat and access to the internet? Compared to most humans, you're relatively rich.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#77

Post by forgottenpass »

WalterSear wrote: post #55
forgottenpass wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those fields beat the "change the world" drum as hard as tech startups do. This article seems to be an attempt to an attempt to reconcile action and rhetoric by asking "us" to live up to it. So yes, you can poke the hole that you do. But that's just pretending to miss the point. Personally, I think the reconciliation is rhetoric coming back to earth. It's self-perpetuating saccharine and delusion that should…

"Us"? There is no "Us". There are people that care about the things that you care about, and there are people who make apps like Yo. The latter aren't listening, the former have already heard the message.

I'm not the author, but that appears to be who your comment is responding to. I even put "us" in quote to signal I wasn't endorsing his use of "we".

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#78

Post by LunaSea »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

Besides the argument of the potential that an app like Yo could have, it's also a business decision.

Developers have a limited amount of time they can spare to write code so they have to be wise with their venture choices.

At the end of the day, when you read that Yo was funded for $1M, bubble or not, it's a smarter decision after calculating the risk / benefit ratio to emulate Yo's model.

If their would be more funding in the areas described in the blog post, I'm sure more developers would launch start-ups around them.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#79

Post by digz »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #51

There's a lot that I dislike about this article, but I'll start with this: it is probably self-refuting. Someone could just have easily written: "I find it difficult to see individuals who could focus their time and effort solving [problems like energy, food, water, health, education], instead put their efforts into something like a takedown of the moral priorities of the people behind Yo on a their personal blog." A…

>> And, by the way, who appointed Christoph McCann arbiter of what it good and valuable in this world?

This is such an important point, and why free markets work best. If people derive value out of Yo, then terrific. If they don't, it goes away. Don't need a moral crusader to decide what is worthy.

Re: We have the potential to solve the biggest problems of today

#80

Post by volaski »

So let's not study stuff like astrophysics, since it doesn't really help the starving kids somewhere nor does it solve energy problem, right? And also, let's not make art, after all, it's just some first world people enjoying their luxury while someone somewhere in 3rd world is suffering, how about that? As mere mortals we can never know what impact a technology can have in the long term, no matter what it looks like right now. It's arrogant to judge someone else's creation no matter how silly it looks, especially when it is something that managed to get into a lot of people's mindshare.
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