Comment by m0nastic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m0nastic | Hacker News Reader

This article is helping me validate my theory about someone's opinion about Facebook as a litmus test for how disconnected from regular people they are.

Dave Winer doesn't like Facebook (totally valid opinion).

Dave Winer doesn't like how centralized Facebook has become for people and events (also a totally valid opinion).

But according to Dave Winer, he can't even understand why someone would use Facebook: "So Scoble, you can go enjoy whatever it is you like about Facebook. I can’t imagine what that might be."

This strikes me as someone with a complete lack of understanding for how people use the internet. I see this increasingly, as people not only harbor negative opinions about certain aspects of technology, but can't even comprehend a world in which users actually like using these services.

I'm frightened that people ostensibly involved in the technology industry can possess a chasm this deep between their own model of how things should be and reality.

Generally, chasms between people's ideas of how things should be, and reality, are to be celebrated. It's where radical innovation comes from. Why does it frighten you?

Average people are boring. They are generally fodder for mediocre businessmen to exploit, using tried and tested methods. Facebook is just the next big thing in a long line of bullshit firehoses. Only this time, it enlists your real friends, rather than the imaginary friends you aspire to have and relate to (i.e. celebrities).

I can understand why people do it, but I can't grok why one would expose themselves to the concentrated brain poison that is TV and Internet advertising. Particularly North American media, with its saccharine hammyness and oppressively idyllic world view rammed through your throat.

Every time I accidentally browse the internet without adblock or watch broadcast media, it genuinely offends me. I mute video ads and cover up the window so they don't even get a chance to put their idiotic jingle and brand name in my head.

That puts me far away from Joe Average. That's okay, so do my work and interests.

A great thought, there.

I've had too many conversations with people who seem determined to not see value in Facebook. Suggesting that sending out a group e-mail is just as good as a Facebook event. Or that e-mailing out a link to your private photo web site is as good as uploading to Facebook.

It isn't. And these are sensible people. They just seem utterly unwilling to even try out a web site they've already decided that they hate.

So what? Even dissent for the sake of dissent alone has some merit. Well, sometimes (particularly when the majority is so vast; we need even irrational dissenters to make us pause and reconsider our choices).

Yeah, I wasn't being facetious, I do actually find it concerning.

I worry that as the internet continues to expand out into society, and more and more muggles make up the userbase; technology people will become more and more confused by what the internet is becoming. And I see that blind spot becoming dangerous as it relates to people's ideas for startups or technology improvements. We'll be designing the technology to power a world we don't understand, and that isn't good for us.

And make no mistake, we absolutely won't be able to keep the internet in the shape we've become accustomed, no matter how much we might wish to.

So you think the direction the world will take should be decided by the masses? This is a valid wish, but don't you think people should try to educate and persuade the masses? Point out something that they might have overlooked in their infinite wisdom :) ?

No, no. What I find troubling is our belief that the internet will progress in the way it "should" (based on our beliefs) rather than the way it absolutely will (based on a way of increasingly replacing higher friction interactions/services with ones of lower friction in an effort to make a crap-ton of whatever arbitrarily agreed upon currency we're all using at that point).

I cringe at the thought of anything being decided by the masses, with their existing track record of music, movies, food, art, social mores, etc. I just think we need to realize that at some point the internet will outgrow the terrarium we've created for it, and at that point it won't be ours anymore. And in the grand scheme of things, that's probably a good thing.

But if your entire belief system is predicated around the idea that you'll be able to keep it inside that terrarium forever, I'm going to be really hesitant to put much weight in your thoughts on technology.

So a technologist should always go with the flow? Accept the inevitable? If Western society is in desperate need of anyone, it's not someone who can see where we're headed (we have plenty of those), but someone who's not willing to accept the inevitable (if it is indeed so). We need more rebels!

Though I must confess my ignorance here as I have no clue whatsoever as to who this Winer person is, or who's Scoble for that matter, so I'm not quite sure who it is that I'm defending, but I guess I'm defending the principle.

I have no disagreement with your position. What I'm trying to articulate (and I think I might be failing at), is that there's a difference between arguing against something incredibly successful because you have a bunch of valid reasons why it's a bad idea, and not being able to understand how anyone could possibly like using the thing you dislike.

The latter position will almost certainly lead you down a path of ruin as you try to make your living with technology.

If you worked for a book publisher who couldn't even conceive that people might like ebooks, couldn't fathom why anyone would ever want to read a book on a digital screen, for any reason, you'd quit (I hope).

Not someone who thinks paper books are superior because of the way they feel, or that they don't have DRM, or that you can share them, lend them, resell them, collect them. Those are valid reasons to prefer paper books.

But if you work in the book industry, and honestly can't understand why anybody would ever want an ebook, you're not someone whose opinion about the nature of the book industry I value.

As to who these people are, Dave Winer is a technologist who played a very important roll in making RSS a thing (and he wants to make sure you remember it...for all of eternity), and Robert Scoble is a technoloblogger (he writes about a lot of services/apps from a user perspective) who never met a social networking site/iPhone app/ that let him promote that he didn't like.

@monastic

I see :) And about the "can't even conceive" bit, well, I think he's just saying that. That's what idealists do sometimes.

My impression from having followed Winer's blog since slightly before the time he and Adam Curry bootstrapped podcasting, is that Scoble and Winer go way, way back, and were (presumably still are?) real-life (not merely digital) friends. So, factor that in. I would bet Winer is basically on your side, fwiw.

We need more people like David. I think every developer should pursue to create the internet according to the way they think it should be and users should use apps and software that make sense to them and which they want to use.

Variety and alternatives are good. Opinionated software is good! Mono-culture, design by committee and one single way of doing things (no matter how good or efficient) are all bad.

For example, look at what happened to the US shuttle program, the public manned space program is now limbo because of dependence on a single way of doing things. Thank goodness for the private space enterprises bubbling along and competing on the periphery where there's a glimmer of hope.

Let structures emerge from the outer edges of the internet that are in constant flux. As long as we all agree on the basic protocols in the core of Internet, we'll be fine.

On the other side of this wider debate, my friends think I'm crazy for switching from a very nice Mac GUI, MS Office, QWERTY keyboard et al to Ubuntu et al and work my way up the command line, emacs and relearn Colemak keyboard typing.

I'm starting to enjoy the pay-off of my crazy efforts. My 'sensible' friends don't know what they are missing.

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