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Comment by georgieporgie | Hacker News Reader

Random prediction: ten years from now, a student in China will connect with a student in Germany over Facebook (or whatever mass-appeal social site rises to power). A friendship will grow into a partnership, yielding some of the greatest advances in energy technology of the century.

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Unless they start working out a universal translator (Actually if they aren't working on this then they are all newbs ;0p) then it's unlikely to happen. Other issues would be that Facebook isn't enough for collaborating on science projects.

English is the international language. Facebook in ten years won't be what it is now. Also, as I said, it would happen on whatever social platform is in power, which, in ten years, will probably ubiquitous to an extent that we cannot currently imagine.

They'd be more likely to connect on StackOverflow or GitHub than Facebook.

Facebook is a place where you go to chill and waste time, connect with old friends, check pics of old crushes, catch up on gossip, play games, or share links.

The last thing you'd do there would be to search for another student, it's not built for that.

I suspect that Facebook -- and its use -- will continue to change over the course of the next decade. Currently, it looks like the most promising technology for mass user interaction that has been developed.

StackOverflow is basically a high signal-to-noise ratio content farm. It sells the illusion of fame in exchange for generating content. There is no meaningful social aspect to it. I don't see any signs of it evolving over time, as it seems to exist for a very specific purpose.

Facebook is a mish-mash of previously existing communication technologies, mainly being presented to people who haven't used the prior forms extensively.

A chat system, a 'twitter' like system, a limited blog with comments system, photo sharing with comments, and the familiar followers/contacts that many site have these days.

While amazingly successful, I'd hesitate to call Facebook 'a technology'. They haven't pioneered much except for jamming all that stuff together for a very large audience..

Facebook is a mish-mash of previously existing communication technologies, mainly being presented to people who haven't used the prior forms extensively.

Alternatively: Facebook is a collection of wide-ranging social technologies combined in a tasteful, approachable manner, which has captured the interest of a wider range of the general public than anything before it, by a wide margin.

And will a Chinese student meet a German one and bah blah etc. on Facebook in 10 years? I guess we'll see whether it's even around in 10 years. My belief is that people will have moved on by then. 10 years is a long time and there's nothing particularly special about Facebook.

I invite you to reread my original comment on the subject, particularly the bit in parentheses. The point isn't that Facebook is the place where things will happen, but that all this seemingly inane social software focus will likely reap indirect benefits that are being ignored by the original author.

So, your prediction is that the greatest energy advances of this century will specifically come from two people in different countries who meet on the internet? It seems overly specific, yet also general enough to not be surprising. I'll go along with this.

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