Mike's back

Why do we care? Why are people voting this up, as though it is as interesting and significant as one of our peers sharing technical knowledge?

Seriously, when will the tech industry grow up? Why do we treat pundits and gossip hounds as though they are respected journalists and trade editors? Maybe I'm alone in this, but I really wish we looked at ourselves the same way that those in biotech or architecture look at their trade. We need the equivalent of publications such as Nature (nature.com) or Detail (detail.de) -- instead of link/pageview-bait, we need nuanced reporting of current events in our industry, along with thoughtful analysis of new technical advances/trends. We're certainly at a level of sophistication these days where such reporting is both possible and necessary; it's really time someone steps up to the plate and delivers.

TechCrunch and the like are utterly unprofessional, and they make me feel as though I am part of an amateurish cottage industry. They are little more than distractionware; aside from industry promotion, there is no benefit I see from their existence (and the promotional aspect would be gone if companies could get exposure from a more respected, polished outlet with a similarly-sized community). I have no interest in these people and their methods of operation; maybe it's taboo to say it, however I really do think it's time we all grew up, and stopped looking at ourselves as a bunch of kids in the computer lab (even if that's where many of us find ourselves at the moment).

I want techniques, best practices, and interesting/exciting new developments in our industry. I don't want to know about this man and his childish drama, or his tasteless and unprofessional rants (such as the whole Europe thing). I don't want to read his employees' sensationalized pieces on "developments" that are marginally significant at best -- and quite obviously written to meet some sort of self-imposed quota. The whole thing cheapens our industry and the way we look at it, and I hate it.

Here's an immediate, makes-lots-of-sense-at-2AM idea: perhaps we should start a journal under PLoS (plos.org)? Would anyone else support this?

Most people who do large scale things quickly hit burnout at some point - and then go into bleakness, madness, or meltdown for a while. I don't know of a nicer way to write that, but almost everyone I know and almost everything I've read suggests that if you keep running on overdrive for a long time, you come apart at the seams for a while. I've heard stories about this from mentors and former professors of mine, and always wanted to be above such things. But alas, burnout seems to be real. When it starts coming on, the proverbial camel-back-breaking straw could be any little old thing. Preemptively heading it off by vacationing, scaling down, getting the hell away and doing hard thinking or non-thinking goes a long way.

So there's that - good for Arrington to get away and recharge some. Another thought: If nobody dislikes you, you're not doing something that matters. I'm totally neutral on Michael Arrington - I don't know enough about him and don't read enough Techcrunch to really like or dislike him at all. But I see he polarizes people a lot and people have serious reactions to him. If you want to do something important, look to, expect, and appreciate reactions like that. If nobody dislikes you, you're not doing something that matters.

To be honest I did not notice.