We call ourselves innovators, but most of us are really just iterators
evernote.com
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That's a fine line. The most significant innovations are often iterations. (Google comes to mind.)
Why do we do this? Because we want to get rich, of course.
I disagree with "Because we want to get rich". And I definitely disagree with "of course". Real hackers do this because we just have to. It just so happens that currently it's also a great way to make money. Many of us hacked long before it was this way and many of us still hack for little or nothing (side projects, open source, etc.)
But technologists used to work on big problems.
We still do, probably more than ever. But if you're busy reading Techcrunch and going to conferences and hackathons, you'd probably never know about what the other 99% of us are doing.
They did it because technology is about improving the human condition...
There are many ways to do this, all with relative importance. Putting a man on the moon was definitely cool, but so is getting fresh produce to your supermarket (which probably benefits more people). Like a football team, we hackers all do our part in the blocking, tackling, running, throwing, catching, and scoring. It all counts.
Just a few of the things I've contributed to in the past few years ("sexy" is in the eye of the beholder):
- people get the right prescription medication on time
- firetrucks and ambulances get to where they're supposed to be
- parts that go into cars and planes are properly certified
- prisoners are kept in jail
- those same prisoners get proper medical care
- electronic equipment gets assembled properly and on time
- medical supplies get dispatched to where they're supposed to
- insurance claims are processed properly
- quality data is properly maintained for food itemsThere is no middle class anymore: a line created by average folks who earn an average wage and spend too much and make minimum monthly payments on everything and after 20 years of humping the 9-5 or 10-6 or 12-7 wonder why their bank accounts are so anemic and why can't I retire to Hawaii like I planned to when I was 20? "Middle class" is a useless metric anyway, because when pressed to define it nobody can, or they massage the definition as the argument evolves.
Here's the definition: if you qualify for government assistance, you're poor. If you don't have to work for your money - you might choose to, but you don't have to - you're rich. The middle class is right in between. I don't know about you, but I see a huge swath of people in between the states of "waiting in the government cheese line" and "collecting 6/7/8/9-figure interest checks".
That really sucks for your friend. But they exemplify the difference between broke and poor -- they were broke, in a bad spot; but I assume they're gainfully employed now and managing well (I hope).
And of course several countries in the world do provide for the disabled. Even the US provides some support.
If I could achieve this without having to think about getting rich or becoming broke, I would. I don't want personal fame or appreciation either. I just want to be. I just want to do.
No, I did not think about it that way. I was thinking more on the lines of honest work and honest pay. Though if money was not a constraint many of us would be monks(as far as work is concerned).
prisoners are kept in jail
insurance claims are processed properly
~
As for the rest, good work!
I'm not even going to respond to that troll bait first point of yours, but as for the second, please give some insight as to how a programmer in charge of writing insurance claims processing applications can "fix the base system."
Poster said, "I've contributed to keeping prisoners in prison."
This is in no way an inherently good thing--especially given the well-documented clusterfuck that is the judicial system in the US. Have you ever been through the wringer?
I don't think that kudos for helping that system is in order, unless it was specifically something like "I wrote software to help schedule inmate times so that violent offenders and trouble inmates were not put in the same areas at the same time as nonviolent or well-behaved inmates."
As for the second point--look, it's insurance claims. Depending on what the poster did, this ranges from "I helped people get the best claims service from their provider" to "I helped the provider service the bare minimum number of claims." Without more information on what was done, that topic has a lot of room for bad.
"Fix the base system" would be something like "I made a simpler marketplace so that care providers (doctors) can directly bill patients, cheaply and transparently."
... while simultaneously violating the agreements they signed with insurance providers and putting themselves out of business?
I don't know about you, but I want prisoners to stay in prison. To make a blanket statement like "[Contributing to keeping prisoners in prison] is in no way an inherently good thing" is just madness.
Even those innocent of any crime?
"To make a blanket statement like "[Contributing to keeping prisoners in prison] is in no way an inherently good thing" is just madness."
His statement isn't a blanket one, for reference the one you used which I quoted above is a blanket statement. For his statement to a blanket statement it would have to be phrased something like "Contributing to keeping prisoners in prison is an evil thing to do". Which is clearly neither what he said nor meant.
I don't understand this point of view. At least in the US a very large portion of the prison population are in jail for non-violent crimes related to drug sales and/or possession, and are being imprisoned unjustly. Some if not all "white collar" crime prisoners should probably also not be imprisoned. I for one certainly do not see jail as having any sort of innate "goodness" or nobility associated with it. It's a horrible, brutal, inelegant hack at best, and a travesty of justice in many cases.
gg internet once again.
(And this is saying something coming from me, given my well known penchant for using hyperbole to make a point!)
Edit: edited to make less abrasive.
I think what he is saying is that smart people need to work on fixing the system, for example by making sure people do not get jailed unfairly, rather than propping it up by helping prisoners stay in prison. Personally, I would feel pretty bad if someone who gets jailed for marijuana possession is kept in jail with the use of software I created.
Keeping prisoners in jail is absolutely required. Determining if they should be in there in the first place is not the responsibility of the prison system, it is a responsibility of the judicial system.
It sounds to me like the OP hit the brief on the head.
The op should have just started an insurance industry disrupting medical insurance startup rather than get paid to work at an already established insurance company where he's somewhat guaranteed(by law) to get paid......
I used to work at a telecommunications company. Maybe I should have created my own telco company so consumers could get cheaper mobile phones instead!?!?!?
You sound like a kid.
We need prisons. If you can't put people in jail, what do you do with people who rape or kill innocent people because it's fun and/or profitable to do so?
I assume from the tone of your post that you'd disapprove even more strongly of using torture or a swift and sure death penalty to deal with such people (assuming the specifics were found not to run afoul of the Constitution's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" and were able to get enough political support to be implemented; passing both those hurdles would be extremely unlikely in practice).
So what's your alternative? What "enlightened" country do you live in, and what do they do with criminals?
I agree it would be nice if we could shut down our prisons. It would also be nice if people didn't get sick or die, if nobody was poor or hungry, if we had spaceships that could travel to other stars or galaxies as easily as airplanes travel to other countries or continents. But we can't just ignore the facts and limitations of the real world just because we don't like them.
Of course, the question, and the issue of where "real American" comes from is: which elite? "Real American" talk is when the capitalist class talks to the blue-collar working class and demonizes the white-collar working class, the intelligentsia, the professional working class, academia, the culture industry, and any petite bourgeoisie associated with the aforementioned.
My theory is that that's because once you have enough to get by, the problem of money goes away and is replaced with competing concerns (ie. curiosity to create, learn or experience new things).
I disagree, I think that the 'real' anything meme is harmful and should be stopped immediately.
> I agree with the suggestion that wealth is generally not the aim that drives the more knowledgeable minds to long-term effect in our industry.
I agree with this as well, I just didn't like the idea that if you are driven by money then you aren't a hacker.
EDIT: added missing word.
Lots of people would choose to say 'artist' and 'true artist' for those sets of people, and while that might be slightly unfortunate terminology (since those who are not 'true artists' may still be exceptional 'artists'), there is a definite subset of 'artist' that it is useful to identify.
I think the same is true of 'hacker'.
I'm not trying to diminish the work of the mentally unsound: some of the greatest hackers and artists, I'm sure, fit your description. But "real" is a horrible word for it in that stinks of elitism and an extremely unhealthy outlook on life. Please don't use it, for the same reason we don't use "real patriot" or "real rock music" or "real literature". It's either subjective or wrong.
Ignoring the awful "real hackers" commentary, one has nothing to do with what the article was referencing at the time: starting a company.
At the core, if you start a company, you want to make money. Unless you are going the non-profit route, you are in it to make money, and that means getting rich.
What a depressing outlook. Is there no room for people who want to make enough money to get by while doing what they love?
I find the title a nice one-liner, draws attention. But when you think about it, so what? When is something innovation, and when is it iteration anyway? The man didnt land on the moon out of a single project, you know. that classic example was actually iteration ;).
The general statement in there is that of those old guys in every company; "Back than, everything was better.". Nope.
I wouldn't be too proud of that. In fact I would turn down such a job "opportunity" if it ever should come up.
Yes, I know. Prisons are a necessary evil until we come up with a better solution to crime but still they are evil and I don't want to help robbing fellow human beings of their freedom.
There's lots of genuine good to be done in the world outside of the US. A year or two ago I did a short presentation to students in an entrepreneur class in Monterrey, Mexico. Now Monterrey is rich even by US standards (in fact it's just across the border), but even then there's still a lot of genuine people problems to be solved by entrepreneurs in that country. Think of the problems one could solve in a poorer country like the ones in Central America or poor areas of wealthier countries in South America like Colombia, Chile, Brazil.
The example I gave the students in Mexico was the need to accept payments online in Central/South American countries. Paypal doesn't work in many of them and online bill pay is almost unheard of. Even in relatively wealthy countries like Mexico and Colombia people can spend an entire afternoon in a massive queue outside their bank to pay their cable bills in person and in cash. Internet startups can't grow because there's no easy way to accept payment online. Building an online payment/mobile infrastructure is a fundamental problem that could make a lot of lives better and pave the road for entrepreneurs in the future. It's not an easy problem and it's not really a tech problem either, but it's not impossible!
I find your comments and the original submission inspiring.
I think that the reason why so many of these recognizable problems remain unsolved has to do with something of a snowball effect. The opportunity to do hard work that can be seen as purely technological innovation is often more appealing than retrofitting some technology to solve an existing problem.
To use the example you gave, _forms_ of online payment exist, and are growing. Products like Paypal have been changing the way many companies think about accepting payment from their customers for years; immediate online payment has slowly been adopted by the U.S's largest banks.
However, for most of their users, these technologies exist as innovations in luxury: they improve upon existing technologies in order to provide further ease-of-use. This is different, I think, than applying an existing technology to a problem: instead of _improving_ upon something, you are instead _applying_ something to a different set of circumstances.
I think many people do not think of that as a hard problem: since the 'hard' technology already exists, applying it should be easy.
I also think that for most ambitious people who have 'innovate' stamped at the top of their to-do list and have the freedom of choosing what they would like to work on, it then appears to be a choice between 'improve' and 'apply', and improve likely wins out for most.
EDIT: I realize that I essentially re-make the 'iterate vs innovate' point the author makes in my above comment, but I am choosing to keep it there for the sake of coherence.
I've got just about zero tolerance left for people who don't acknowledge their privilege.
It's the upper-middle class straight white cisgendered male's fault if he doesn't take the time to learn about his privilege. He has the resources, but chooses to ignore it.
(Note: I'm not saying the person from the article necessarily fits this description; I'm speaking more generally)
What's in it for him?
Parent post was right for a good number of people.
A considered opinion deserves respect if not agreement. One formed on assumption, in a vacuum is more difficult to accept.
(I'm reading that you posit that, perhaps I misinterpreted)
If I read that correctly, under what strictures do you interpret reading about the idea of privilege (noting that this word in and of itself has contested and differing meanings) as a moral obligation?
My intuitive, immediate response is that it has something to do with (most?) privilege being an unfair, oppressive institution: one that is self replicating unless it's actively fought. I'm not sure this actually addresses the question you asked though.
You should be careful how you consider this though. We wouldn't hack a tall person's legs off at the knee to force them to be equally as tall as the rest of us, nor do we give geniuses lobotomies to try and equal out intelligence within the population.
It is no one's moral imperative to punish themselves for being placed in a good situation. If life was inherently fair we'd all still be a soup of completely equal unicellular organisms. Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.
If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
Unless, of course, you think that being made aware just how little of what they take for granted is available to others and how unimportant their own skills were is cruel to privileged people? Because if that's the case, fuck you. Seriously.
Upon re-reading the commenter I replied to said he was not quite at the point of speaking about it in terms of moral obligation, which I'll admit to having mis-understood.
But even so, I tried very much to phrase my warning as nothing more than that; a warning. It's perilously easy to get caught up in logical loops that take one far away from ethical and moral underpinnings. Nothing I said takes away from the importance of getting to a state in society where persons are completely able to achieve based on their actions and not their inheritance, but that doesn't mean that all such methods of achieveing that end goal are equally ethical. I hope that cllns takes it in the spirit it was intended, instead of as an exercise to bite back against yet another privileged "cis" piece of shit...
Nobody is arguing this. People that implore others to examine their privilege don't do so to make people feel bad (although this may be a side effect of having a new perspective).
> Our differences and our circumstances conspire to make it so that not everyone has the exact same shot at success, but that's not the worst possible thing that could happen either.
That's the thing, privileged majority groups often enact or re-enforce policy or social attitudes that have the effect of keeping people not in that group from success. The call to examine one's privilege is so that members of the majority group recognize how their position and actions keeps other people from success. Note that by success I do not just mean financial success, but even being alive for members of some groups is a success based on the amount of violence they face.
> If you want to reduce unfair privilege I would recommend starting by helping those without it, instead of obligating those with it.
You cannot simply opt out of privilege. Privilege is just as much about how others view you as the social systems and institutions that back you over other groups of people. Also, people who are suffering from the systems and institutions do not want a hand out, they want to be free to have their own voices and agency, something that is hard to do when privileged groups continue to undermine their attempts at that agency.
And yet you're saying that just by not being (say) transgendered[1] I'm undermining other people's agency. And I can't choose not to. And that it's my fault if I don't think the concept is fully-baked and don't make certain incantations before I speak.
It seems completely transparent to me that this is meant to make anybody that doesn't adopt the terminology out to be a bad person--a sinner in other words. See the root of this thread: cllns has "just about zero tolerance left" for such people. Why would he need to invoke tolerance if it's just a matter of not having the same perspective?
[1] Or fat, vegan, illiterate, astigmatic, etc. The list of things people are apply the term "privilege" to is constantly expanding. Is there truly nothing amiss with the concept?
If you want to follow up in depth later on (rather than HN threads), my email is in my profile.
Because otherwise they become tyrants.
We're talking about the most powerful, most influential demographic in a particular place, whether that's Western European in the US or Han-Chinese in China. There is a dominant group that gets a tremendous amount of decision-making power, and those in power have the moral obligation of having perspective.
Because without understanding and perspective you don't just get silliness, you get real harm - "The poor are poor because they're too lazy to work" is a silly thought, until it influences policy, and then it becomes tragedy.
There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.
> There is absolutely a moral obligation to seek perspective (cast another, understand one's own privilege), and this goes double if your race/religion/etc grants you power over others.
Again, I ask why[1]. What precisely gives that moral imperative? My readings in history do not suggest to me that this ethical stricture has been a constant throughout history.
[1] 5 Whys, Question Everything, etc. Don't take it personally please.
Does it have to be? Slavery was the social norm for thousands of years and has only been widely considered unacceptable for perhaps <5% of recorded civilization.
Ditto race equality - we consider it a moral imperative today, but for thousands of years it was not really a thing.
The notion of morality evolves over time - the fact that a moral conclusion is new does not in and of itself make it less, well, imperative.
But there's also the flip side - in this case this is something that has been considered a moral imperative in history. The concept that the rulers have a moral obligation to be informed and just is well supported by historical societies.
Back when we gave power to people based on familial relations, we called this the noblesse oblige[1]. The concept was also applied to other figures of power, such as the monarchy. The concept is mixed up with a lot of notions that one might find offensive today (e.g., that the masses are unable to rule themselves and from which derives the obligation and responsibility to rule fairly in their stead).
Nowadays we don't give out power based on family (much), we do it instead based on wealth and many other secondary factors - race and religion being large among them.
Terms like "champagne socialist" or "bleeding heart liberal" are invoked.
Perhaps it is seen as patronising to the poor because it makes the implication that the poor need the help of upper middle class white people to help them out of their problems?
That doesn't mean "upper middle class white" necessarily, but it does disproportionately seem to affect that group (because otherwise we wouldn't be talking so much about gender, class, race, etc. privilege)
Not that I necessarily agree with my correction, but I found yours to be a bit... politically myopic.
What is "the right way" for a person to think about his position in society? Is there only one correct point of view?
What concerns me is when it's presented as a predigested, one size fits all "conclusion" - e.g. "Straight White males are oppressors, females and minorities are oppressed, no exceptions ever".
Some people did make it out of poverty and went on to live productive lives. Others, the ones that sold drugs, either ended up being junkies, dead, jailed, or just disappeared. This due to the type of business they got into. I'm sure that had these kids gone into real businesses like mowing lawns, painting houses, working at a farm, selling eggs, or anything positive, they would be good productive people.
I was lucky. At age 9 I started selling candy. Then I joined Amway at age 14. Then I opened up my first (illegal) auto shop some years after. Why always had the option of selling drugs, but it just wasn't attractive as a business. For every sale I would make about a dollar. If I made 30 sales in a day (given the competition from other dealers), then I would be putting myself at risk for $210 week (you worked 7 days a week). Not worth it. I did not make that much selling candy, but at least I was not getting shot at. And with Amway, made twice as that much by selling soap.
Why did I make it out and not others? I was lucky. My parents were professionals, the only ones in the whole barrio. The other kid's parents were not. They also had to incur into dealing drugs, or other illegal activities. The issue is that these people did not do this because they wanted, they did so because they had no other option. Dealing drugs was the only job they could get, much less do. So the kids were grandfathered into selling drugs, too.
Can poor kids do startups to get out of poverty? Absolutely. But they need to have the right information to do so. Their parents need to have legal jobs available. But not fast food jobs, but real stuff. Construction workers, electricians, mechanics, etc. Those jobs are gone these days.
I'm just lucky to be a software engineer. My best friend? In jail.
There's a quote I remember from somewhere about this that was something along the lines of "When you give someone two bad options, don't be surprised when they take one."
I grew up mostly in an upper middle class neighborhood, but for high school, we were bussed to a school in a more lower class area. There were a lot more trailer parks in the area and the auto body program at my high school was pretty popular. Just last week I was driving through that area and saw business after business with signs outside looking to hire CNC machinists, HVAC installers, etc. Those skilled jobs aren't gone. They're getting harder and harder to fill. I don't think my high school even offers auto body classes any more, but there are two college-track magnet programs there.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57547101/employers-can...
A friend of mine quit his apprenticeship as a machinist because he can make more money doing phone tech support for a cable company.
Maybe my friend is full of it (and believe me, I gave him a TON of flak for quitting).
Generally these are experienced pro's though, so guessing you gotta start at the bottom and work up.
But that's where I say pity, thought I don't know your friend's circumstances, and certainly if he needs the money now then it's the right choice. But so many just choose the quick, easy money now, and as a result the skilled trades in general are a dying art.
One other thing I notice, too - there's just a ton of stress, and nothing harms learning like stress. I once shared an office in a gangland type area, and it was impossible to work at night because the gunfire and helicopters really stopped any flow of ideas.
(In fact, I think the fact I don't drink has actually harmed my career, because I don't really socialize as much as I used to. My SO hates alcohol. I like it, but can't partake.)
The main reason why poor people are poor is because they make like $8.50 an hour and no benefits. Also, grocery store stats refute your assertion about foods. The bag-it-yourself stores sell more per customer than the mainstream supermarkets.
It would be good if at least some of them can get to information and bootstrap some education / skillset from there.
they're like the masses of people who got interested in the internet after it was on tv all the time and advertised. (which includes people of all classes of course)
they didn't get exposure from college, like i did, or exposure from work, like many office workers and management did. they got it from tv, and see it as a complement to tv or cable tv (which many, many poor people don't have).
so right off the bat, they don't see internet as more important than television or video games or other things, when it's probably the most important thing in telecommunications in the past century.
now, that said, there's a lot of working class computer users out there. in fact, when it comes to socializing online, i think the working class have been doing it more than anyone else for the past 10 or 15 years, because hands down, the internet is the cheapest way to socialize and meet people. i don't know for sure, but i suspect it's been a very important part of socializing for all the brainy kids in middle and high school.
look at the people being busted for being in Anonymous. it's a mix of classes. they're not all rich kids like Aaron Swartz (RIP).
that kind of leads me into some things that the rich and middle class can do to help the poor. i think the best thing ever has been free and open source software, especially linux, but the whole culture of giving it away, making sources available, and giving away free documentation. i've learned a ton this way, and meet people who have modest resources who are learning programming. a lot of sysadmin jobs are held by people who were working class, too. it's huge on so many levels.
another, which I've done, is just fix up old computers and give them away. i'm sure we all do this. just set them up with xubuntu and open office or something similar. maybe buy some ram. maybe show them how to repair it.
share your wifi password, or go open.
repairing computers for free or cheap helps too, but i'd say only if they really can't afford it. if they can, they should just hire one of the local shops.
Microsoft has done a lot towards making MS stuff cheap or free, and giving away hardware, for people in need or for nonprofits. I think that's helped a lot. FOSS can't really do the same, in the same way, but it's going to get there soon with open hardware.
i think app stores are good. they lower software costs for consumers, and reduce the risks for capitalizing software development. i think the ubuntu software center is a good thing and supporting that by buying and developing for it will help.
i wish i had studied spanish. it would be easier to organize some kind of computer network across buildings. of course, this violates contracts -- so forming an ISP that would allow customers to resell internet links would be a really useful thing for poor communities. also, fighting for legislation to protect this kind of peering service would be good.
facebook's new PAC looks like it won't help working class entry level IT folks, because it will fight to boost H1B. they're also going to push for charters and, probably, reforms to replace classes with online classes. so organizing against that within communities could be good.
I think library-based hackerspaces are also a good thing. Fight to fund those.
Actually, poor kids start more startups that rich kids but access to money and network is very limited. I do think that "Y Combinator for kids-from-poor-families" might be even more successful that Y Combinator.
A person is not their balance sheet, their skin color, or their preferred type of partner.
The truth is that--barring sheer crazy--anyone would play the cards dealt to them as well as they can muster.
This "Check your privilege" stuff, once a useful exercise in introspection, appears to have become another threadbare excuse for real thought and critique. What a fucking bore.
Don't you understand how much damage that type of thinking does, and how it's as bad as the progress we've been trying to make against, for example, dismissing a woman's opinions out of hand because they're a woman's?
Don't turn try to turn back the clock on equality, especially in a medium where ideas actually can stand on their own merits (or lack thereof).
And who made up the categories, and laws that discriminated based on categories, and who still holds the power to use those categories. It's largely white people.
It seems to me like denial, hypocrisy, or both.
(I say that as a person of color. Being Asian, I am a relatively privileged color, too, compared to black and brown people. That's just a fact. At the individual level, though, I know plenty of black and brown people who not only have more privilege than I, but grew up with more than I did and have networks that are more powerful than mine.)
This is mostly a cliché
The short answer is: because they have more important troubles about to think. Poverty, lack of opportunities, drugs, drunks or the ocassional abuse of members of your family or even from the police.
But the "maybe not so obvious" answer is that in fact young inmigrants are one of the people more focused, and more pressed by family and environment, into the creation of small business in your new country. And a lot are sucessful doing this. America is, probably, one of the countries with more cases of "the small grandpa's store". Now we all live in the supermarketzoic age, so things are very different currently.
Having enough surplus capital that we can take a three day trip to the Moon seems pretty First World to me.
Which technologists worked on "ending poverty" as a primary goal? Did we stop working on ending disease? We can't seem to decide whether we are spending way too much on ending disease or way too little.
Articles like this keep popping up but they don't really seem to have any point other than being self-congratulatory to the author and likeminded audiences for how much they care about Important Things instead of Uber, which is just for taking a car from SFO to Moscone (oh wait except it's not, it actually turns out to have side effects that are significant benefits to immigrant women who would otherwise be shut out of the cab industry: http://transpoplanner.tumblr.com/post/40777853649/is-uber-em...).
Today, perhaps, but in retrospect our first manned moon mission probably bdid more for 20th-Century technology than any other single project.
I see this sentiment a lot these days, and I can't help but wonder if this is a case of looking into the past through rose-tinted glasses. Just like how people always talk about the "good ole' days" while selectively forgetting about everything that was wrong during that time. Could this all be selection bias? Decades ago, the barrier to entry to become a technologist and start a tech company was a lot higher. Writing software was harder, more expensive, and fewer people were trained to do it. Therefore those people had to be especially passionate and skilled at the craft. I think this subset of technologists still exists and is probably even larger than it was "back then," but since there are so many more developers out there today, they make up a smaller percentage.
This goes to the core of creativity: Creativity usually comes from combining things or ideas that are normally compartmentalized in others' minds. Have you ever noticed how most of the startup founders you know have a wide diversity of experiences to draw upon? Most of them have lived in foreign countries and are well acquainted with subcultures most of us are barely even aware of. The reason curiosity is such a positive trait is because it gives you more inputs to operate off of. The article gives a perfect example:
"A long time ago, when I was a columnist at the Las Vegas CityLife, my editor called me up one day and asked if me if I ever wanted to find out what was in the storm drains under the city. And because I have notoriously poor self-preservation skills, I grabbed a Mag-Lite and headed on down." That's the kind of crazy, insatiable curiosity that ends in you seeing the world differently. That's why innovators seem so crazy, but what they're doing makes complete sense in their minds.
In other words, in my mind it's impossible to draw a line between "innovation" and "iteration," because every innovation is really an iteration of different ideas no one had ever really put together before.
However, this makes me wonder if maybe we shouldn't be focused on "innovating." Maybe it's not the goal (or it shouldn't be the goal). But then, what should? What should we aspire to build or create? Should we aspire to any particular thing? Maybe we should just do what we want and ignore what others have to say?
I don't really know, and I'd love to hear what others thoughts are.
So there are more people worried about solving problems like "I have a house full of massive TVs but I still need to press the remote to change channels!" than problems like "I'm poor and can't get a job".
The accepted Wisdom on HN seems to be that if you are targeting average consumers you better make your product free because they don't have money to pay for it. So you still need to build the business model around high net worth people (like advertising companies).
If anybody's interested: this is not an essay, it's my notes for a speech I delivered at Inspire, a monthly talk series put on by Tony Hsieh's Delivering Happiness project here in Las Vegas. The talk itself was filmed and you can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moO2EfWQOTE
It looks like an essay because I'm a writer, and I write my talks like essays and then kind of wing it when I'm on stage.
I am aware that bits of this aren't especially subtle, but I had eight minutes to do the talk in.
And I apparently need to clarify what I mean by "innovation" versus "iteration". What I meant, basically, is that the Valley right now reminds me of Hollywood in the late 80s, where everybody was trying to pitch their new movie as "Die Hard in/on/with an [X]". Die Hard on a train, Die Hard on a submarine...taking some existing idea and trying to just twist it slightly enough to capitalize on it. So we do "It's like [X] for [Y]".
Instagram for animated GIFs.
Facebook for payroll managers. (I've actually heard that one.)
Evernote for illiterates.
These are jokes, but I hope you take my point. That's what I meant by "iteration" versus "innovation". Imagine if Jobs had said "The Apple is like the IBM 1620, except beiger and smaller." Or if that's how he thought of it.
Personally, I think a lot of the most-hyped stuff we make in this industry is just silly, useless bullshit that doesn't solve any real problems, or problems that are worth solving unless you're a lazy, pampered, entitled asshole who genuinely has a hard time with the notion of picking up one's own dry cleaning. (That example in my speech was something featured on HN, by the way.)
I guess if those are the problems you want to solve, go ahead, but I just feel as though there are more pressing issues in the world...provided you can see outside of your own circumstance.
I'm fortunate enough to have lived rich and lived poor, and while rich is better, poor is far more prevalent in the world. I feel like poor people's problems are more useful to solve.
But hey, I could be wrong. And I won't deny I'm being judgmental, but who really gives a shit what I think? :-)
There's so much truth there... we work on "stuff" and some of the "stuff" we work on is truly amazing in many ways, but - and I don't know about you - I sometimes find myself wondering "is this really making the world a better place, in the general sense"? Even the stuff we are doing at Fogbeam Labs, which I am very passionate about, and even though we have very explicit core values[1] that drive us - sometimes leaves me thinking "this isn't going to help a poor starving child in Africa. Should I be doing something else"?
On the other hand, part of the reason we do all Open Source software is exactly because we think producing more OSS does make the world generally better, in at least some small regard. And if some would be entrepreneur in Africa or Afghanistan or something uses our software some day, and it helps them succeed, grow a business and create jobs and improve lives, then we have done something very positive. But it's hard to keep that in mind sometimes, when the chain of connections is so long and so speculative. I sometimes want to be doing something with a more obvious and direct impact on helping people.
[1]: http://fogbeam.blogspot.com/2011/06/blogging-fogbeam-custome...
Volunteering in other ways can help; while the effects aren't as long lasting or deep (but subtle), the instant gratification of helping to save a life can be surprisingly uplifting :)
Yeah, I know the feeling. When I started my first real programming job, I spent a lot of time wondering if I'd made the right choice, and trying to figure out how - if at all - this job would lead to a scenario where I could say I changed the world in some sense. One of my biggest fears is, as you say, to have never been (for how I define "having been"). I sometimes thing, if I live a life where I do enough of note to one day justify having a Wikipedia page, then I could probably live with that.
It's interesting though... I saw an interview with a UFC fighter once (I think it might have been Dan Henderson, but don't hold me to that) where he was asked "What are your goals in life" and said something like "I want to be in the history books. Not the history books of ultimate fighting, but the history books kids read in school". I feel like that sometimes, like what would make me happy would be knowing that I left a mark behind that would outlast my mortal self.
But this article hits close to home, as does your comment, and there's not a day that goes by that I wish I was getting paid to work on open source software full time.
Yeah, that's another reason I do find a sense of purpose in this Fogbeam Labs thing. One of our goals is to provide a home for people like you (and me, and many others) who want to work on OSS stuff, but want to get paid as well. Basically, one big reason I want to create a company, is because the "company I would want to work for" doesn't exist, so I figure I'll just create it myself. If we succeed, I'd love to one day have Fogbeam Labs known as "a great home for hackers". I'm convinced we'll get there, but man, is it a lot of work! :-)
Volunteering in other ways can help; while the effects aren't as long lasting or deep (but subtle), the instant gratification of helping to save a life can be surprisingly uplifting
There's a lot to be said for various kinds of volunteering. In my case, I spent about a decade as a volunteer firefighter. That was a wild experience in so many more ways than I could ever tell. Some good, some bad, but at least all during that time I always knew I was doing something to really contribute to the world. Now, I never literally pulled somebody out of a burning building seconds before it collapsed, or any story-book stuff. But we responded to a few fires, make interior attacks, and knocked down the fire at an early enough stage to save the home, on a few occasions. So, I can take heart in knowing that, somewhere out there, are a handful of people who didn't have to go through digging through the remnants of a burnt home, and rebuilding from scratch, etc., and that I played a role in that. To this day, I probably still look back on some of those experiences as the most meaningful ones I've had in my life.
These "first world problem"-solving companies he's talking about are really just B2B companies made to help the ACTUAL, real-world problem solving companies do their jobs more easily. No customer cares about MailChimp. No consumer thinks about Twilio. They're not solving first-world problems, they're solving BUSINESS problems.
Downplay the importance of those companies all you like, but making one company's business operations better in turn allows that company to reach out and help more people.
There are some notable ones, but it seems to be the road less traveled.
But, my point is that these companies are indirectly going after the big problems by taking care of the little things. There are companies of 1 to 2 people who can now outsource almost every physical aspect of their service so that they can focus on their core product. Do I hire a team of sysadmins and technicians to maintain a server farm to 1) pay, 2) train, 3) meet with regularly, or do I simply host my service on AWS? One could argue that AWS is nothing but a first-world solution, but hey, it's responsible for hosting a HUGE number of companies! These "small", "iterative", "derivative" services can have a huge impact on industries. Just because they're not devoted to saving Africa or rescuing animals or ending world hunger doesn't mean they're not important.
> There are some notable ones, but it seems to be the road less traveled.
It's funny that you mention the 'road less traveled'. People use that phrase in allusion to Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," where the narrator opines about coming to a fork in the road and wondering about how his life would be different had he taken the other path.
The funny part is that Frost was really being sarcastic and basically saying that it makes no difference which road you'll take. So yes, you can "go after the big problems" consciously and take that "road less traveled," but in the end, BOTH paths can result in solving big problems (or not solving anything).
"People want to hear about the one big idea that changes the world, but that’s not how the world works. It’s not about visionary ideas; it’s about lots of good ideas which do not seem world-changing at the time, but which turn out to be great after lots of sweat and work have been applied."
It takes time for innovations to affect society. I bet that in 10/15 years we'll see that quantum computing and deep learning would be very important.
The reality is no one is going to come up with an idea like mFarm without REALLY understanding that audience. You won't understand an entire ecosystem just by sitting on the corner. If you want to help Kenyans, instead find some promising Kenyan entrepreneurs and offer to be their code monkey, review their code or host their website. I think humility is crucial if you want to contribute to a market you don't fully understand.
But I absolutely disagree that web developers can't impact poverty in Africa (or, maybe more importantly, in their own town). To be perfectly frank, I merely think most of us in this industry don't give a shit one way or another. Which is fine, but I'm perfectly happy to judge people all day long for thinking that way. ;-)
Something that's built in such a way that a community create a lot of knowledge about the problem and context(general situation, current solutions and their limitations) , but maybe not the solution, so people could be more motivated to implement their invented solutions?
"Porn" was a terrible example, btw. I imagine Porn is more difficult to get rich at then by copy-pasting and iterating on an idea in a space where VC funding is flying and it's the "popular" thing to do.
Porn, I'm sure, is extremely difficult to raise funding for and I'll bet licensing from the actual producers of porn is costly. What about user generated porn sites? I'll bet their revenue models are even more scary and only a few actually make it by pushing camsite adverts on you.
[EDIT] To finish what I was saying, I believe as a programmer, not porn but HFT or working for finance/quant firms would be a good parallel for "getting rich".
Sending humans to the Moon was (and apparently still is) a First World problem, unless you intend to terraform and colonize it with a social cross-section of humanity.
Smart people are still working on the other big problems, but they require a lot of time and resources -- heavily concentrated in a relatively small number of organizations I might add -- while the rest of us have to satisfy ourselves with making money and a life relatively free of heroic deeds.
Theres your innovative app that lets you hire private taxis for getting around town.
Theres your new 3D Game Engine that introduces a few new features and pushes the boundaries of computer graphics.
Theres a guy in india building cheap bicycles from cardboard.
Theres your electric car company that pushes our understanding of a good all-electric car to new levels.
Theres your Space company that makes Space endeavours a lot less expensive and wants to put humans on Mars in 10 years.
This is all iteration, standing on the shoulders of giants and all, but its also innovation, just on completely different scales.
1) Provide lots of free content, get users to upload it themselves and just be on hand to deal with DMCA takedowns etc. SEO the hell out of your site with every technique you can get your hands on, finance it with aggressive ads and concentrate your efforts on a/b testing to get the maximum number of ad clicks.
2) Produce high quality , unique content and charge for access. You need very regular updates (almost daily) and you need somebody full time issuing DMCA takedown notices in order to beat the pirates. Basically you need to make it easy for your customers to just sit back and fap rather than combing tube sites and closing popups to find the content they want.
It also seems to help if you can somehow sell it as "art porn" so that people won't feel embarrassed recommending it to their friends. Also perhaps build a community around the porn in some way.
Note: I don't work in porn, so I don't know too much but this seems to be my observations based on which sites stick around.
The reason I haven't done a startup is because i simply don't have the monetary support. I have to pay for my mom and family, pay rent, etc. We don't have the privilege of a circle of people with money.
Our parents couldn't afford to send us to college, in fact it's better for them that we start working as early as possible. Our past generations weren't scientists, lawyers, etc. They were immigrants, mostly farm and home workers. So, we're one of the first generations to even have the opportunity to be lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc.
The author is right, and a lot of people can't relate or even think about those types of problems.
But, the problems he listed are still pretty dear in our hearts and perhaps the next few generations will tackle it.
Find me a way to get rid of the absurd 3% worldwide tax that Visa, Amex, Mastercard take on every payment for almost NO added value (well there was added value 30 years ago, but today ?) and then, OK, let's call this innovation.
There are good arguments to be made on both sides. On the one hand I'd love to create something truly groundbreaking, but on the other, I don't want to toil away my life for decades and finally reach success with only a few decades of my life to live. Who says I need to innovate in the first place? I've only got 80 years here to live, why not make as much money as I can, as quickly as possible, and live my life to its absolute fullest.
Of course, these arguments are based on the assumption that your goal is to become wealthy and to innovate. It's a time issue for me. I don't for one second look down on people working on the next hot social app because there's a chance they may cash out far earlier than had they labored away in a lab studying the subjects that'll really push humans forward.
In the end, there's no great metric by which our accomplishments wil be judged. If you wanna spend your hours on a new email app, fine, and if you wanna spend your years studying photosynthetic biochemical photomicroscopy, then go for it. There's no right or wrong.
If someone had the skills, ability, and opportunity to tangibly help a large group of people through their work, but instead chose to work on the "next hot social app" in order to gain personal wealth (assume both were "one-time" opportunities, and mutually exclusive), would you hold that person to be ethically unjust?
There are a lot of companies working on a lot of very small problems these days. It's natural, since the economic imbalance makes it more worthwhile to solve small problems for a large number of people who have disposable money to pay for small solutions.
But there are big problems out there that we should be inspired to solve.
Let's solve the meta-problem: what's holding us back from being able to think of solutions to the bigger problems facing humanity? What's the cause of our collective myopia?
But technologists used to work on big problems.
1. No, not everyone in this position confuses "iteration" with "innovation."
2. No, not all people who are working on startups or startup products consider themselves "innovators."
3. No, all of us certainly do not confuse "poverty" with "lack of startup initiative."
Yeah, most of what "we," in the sense the author seems to mean, do is iteration (at best). But suggesting that this is a standard mistake is a confusing assumption and, to me, suggests that beyond the iteration/innovation mistake, the author has made so many generalizations that by making one point he's missed several that are painfully similar.
But then again, maybe I'm hanging out on that "One Block" - But I guess that block encompasses 12mi^2 :-).
More on topic - I wouldn't agree completely. Some startups are new completely, some are building things a little bit better, some are just using technology to re-invent something for the 21st century. If you're limiting your example startups then you can make any point you want.
Solving the problems of wealthy people might be rewarding and enriching (for the solver), but the actual impact on the world is generally much less than if you solved more pressing problems.
It's a law of diminishing returns. After a while, people should be able to solve their own problems. What they do instead is to redefine "problem" from "life-threatening risk" to "banal annoyance".
If you save a child from dying from cholera, they might grow up and change the world themselves. If you make it more convenient for spoiled white people to buy more shit to fill up their meaningless lives, not so much.
That is the first time I have ever seen evernote used this way. What a neat way to publish! Seems like it would be a great fit for something like PG's papers.
Because I don't care about such problems. I care about doing stuff I a) understand or might get more understanding from b) believe I can do c) find fun in solving d) get paid too.
Your argument is that people don't because of a lack of information - it's not fully so. I know some problems I could work on, which would help other people. I chose not to, because it's an endless tunnel, and it's no fun.
How exactly do you propose to force me - or anyone else - to work on the problems you believe are the most important? Were are your guns ?
To put that in simpler words, if I don't believe your problems fit by abcd criteria, I will not work on them. You may find "public shaming" a useful tool for your deeds, but you will find that it only works a limited amount of times.
Now please excuse me if I don't engage in your guilt trip and instead spend time do stuff I want, which may be in your list of important things, or might not.
[The only real argument there is in the conclusion: we could be concerned if we, as the human race, were collectively not doing stuff we wanted to do because of a lack of ambition, or to follow the 'large base' pyramid example, didn't sell stuff to poor people.
I must say I'm sometimes worried about people lacking ambition, and like in this post engaging in empty rhetorics instead of actually doing stuff - whatever "stuff" might me, even an hello world...]
Most people end up solving problems they see in their daily lives, which do indeed end up being trifles aka first worlds problems etc given the demographic of start up founders. Focusing on serving third world nations or less developed regions can work to enhance their lives, but its simple a shift in market focus, not a real push to further science or be on the cutting edge of innovation. IMO there is nothing particularly innovating about making a sms based service for Kenyan farmers, it's just a clever use-case of existing technology to serve an underexploited market.
The reason we have a lull in true innovation is because we have hit a saturation point in the larger realm of technology. There is only so much you can do with computers, the internet, and lastly, smart phones. We're waiting on the next big thing.
Standing on the shoulders of giants!
And no, they're not a good model to emulate, that wasn't my point. :-) This was an eight minute speech, and the text you're reading was my notes for it, not the final version, so some of the subtlety gets lost.
http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2013/mar/27/joe-downtown-...
Point taken, but. . .not sure I agree that technologists were that involved with trying to end povery. Well, they were certainly involved, but I don't think they were the drivers. And I think sending humans to the moon was definitely a first world "problem" - not even on the list of priorities for third-word nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution
That was huge, and new technology was what made it possible.
My friend and I built TargetMobi, http://www.targetmobi.com along a similar vein. In Africa, SMS is everywhere and our goal was to help companies and organizations connect with their users via SMS.
Unfortunately, we found zero Angel/VC interest in this and have since pivoted a few times.
I think the overall approach still has potential though.
In other words, they use technology as a tool in broader campaigns aimed at solving societal problems. To name just one example of many, take a look at how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is using apps to combat childhood obesity.
For people who are really affecting change, technology is a tool rather than a shiny new toy or a means to an end.
http://www.iowafarmertoday.com/news/livestock/there-s-an-app...
"A crowdfunding platform for long-term, socially valuable projects."
Perhaps the author does not mean iterator in a derogatory way? Obviously, his own company is an iteration on the existing crowdfunding wave.
Phones are sold until they have minor issues, then trashed. Software products are discontinued instead of being made open source.
We need to tackle these issues.
"Others are just nay sayers, but on HN we just rhyme sayers, but I'll just get down voted by a bunch of HN-taking-things-too seriously player haters.
Firstly, his thesis could be boiled down to a very simple question: "Why do people do what they do (instead of what I want them to do)?" You suggest that they are insufficiently self-reflective, not very world-wise, and perhaps just a bit self-centred. These are reasonable inferences, but they don't go very deeply into understand the psychology, beliefs and motivations of your stereotypical spoiled white kid.
A deeper question we might ask in response to your thesis is, "What's wrong with the world (and why is nobody fixing it)?" The sub-question might alternately be: "Why aren't enough people fixing it?" or "Why aren't the right people fixing it?" Neé spoiled rich kids.
The problem with both questions is that they are primarily underscored by the implicit question, "Why aren't more people like me (and why don't they believe and feel like I do)?" But the answer to that is simple: evolution. Biological evolution ensures that there is a wide variety of people, physiologically, and social evolution (not Social Darwinism, thank you -- no ranking is being proposed) ensures that there are a wide variety of belief systems and mental models of how the world works and why.
But let's, for the moment, make the (unfounded and highly unlikely) assumption that the OP's point of view is somehow more informed, insightful, rational, or just generally "better" than those of all the people whom he is criticizing. I mean, he wouldn't have made the argument if he didn't think it had more merit than other arguments in favour of "iterating" or whatever other less noble activity they are pursuing instead. And he may be right (it's only unlikely based on probability, and the apparent level of effort pursued in constructing said argument).
People do what they do because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that it is in their interests. Either directly, in terms of immediate material rewards, through indirect rewards (material, social or even spiritual), or future rewards to their offspring. That is a basic economic tenet that is difficult to ignore. (It is hard to disprove, partly because "rewards" are variable and ill-defined). Stated another way, people do things because they think (or feel) that it is right (or reasonable) to do, or just because they want to do them.
It may be for riches, or that may merely be a subordinate goal towards pleasure, happiness, fulfillment or meaning. My suspicion is that people are primarily motivated by status (a measure of what is meaningful) when they behave in ways that affect their social surroundings, but otherwise they like pleasure, whether sensual, aesthetic or moral (and the pride or satisfaction from doing good is definitely a pleasure, as is that of winning, which could be called a moral activity, if you believe you are better than other people and deserve to win).
But not only do people do what they believe is good for their interests, they also don't do things that they think are bad for their interests, which is the true meaning of "wasting time": actions without real consequence (as estimated by the agent). This isn't bad or evil. Most people simply do not know how to "change the world" in a manner which will satisfy the OP, or at best have a very vague notion, and very little reason to be confident that they could do it. In other words, people engage in activities which they consider to have a reasonable chance of success. Exactly how they arrived at their estimate of risk/reward is another question.
But in fact it is the ultimate question, since that is where the rubber meets the road. The extent to which someone is misinformed, delusional or outright insane is something that has to be determined for each individual. But we can generalize that the vast majority of people do not have the necessary knowledge, skills, insights and experience to go about saving the world. Nor do they have the right social connections, or affiliations with groups which are changing the world (and have no interest in becoming fund-raisers hanging out on malls and street corners), and are generally discouraged from participating in such marginal activities by their elders and role models, for many reasons (some or all of which may be ill-reasoned, based on false premises, and riddled with superstitions, false authority and bias, and yet are nevertheless core to the world view which these people have at their disposal).
So, for the OP's sake, maybe it's time that he revised his viewpoint on what is wrong with the world, and how to change it. Not by writing blog posts accusing others of failing to live up to his standards (yes, this could be ironic, but in fact I am not judging the OP's career or life goals, merely his argument), but instead by either a) trying to understand better why people don't, in fact, share his beliefs and values, and/or b) by learning how to impart his own wisdom in such a way that he has some modicum of hope in actually affecting the views of other people, rather than just appealing to a crowd of like-minded people with whom he can share his sense of superiority.
On the other hand, maybe that was his goal, and maybe he achieved it, so good for him!
Altruism does exist, and not just because people want the "good feeling" of having done "good deeds."
I've seen Levitt of the University of Chicago speak several times about an altruism experiment that economists conducted showing the lack of altruism in people. In response, one of the audience members once sent him $20 in an envelope and said, "Explain this."
While that's a facetious example, there's plenty of examples of more self-less altruism towards strangers. I think plenty of research shows the altruistic motive towards families, which is partly motivated by evolution.
But altruism towards strangers?
I think an interesting experiment to conduct would be a double blind experiment regarding altruism. Put someone in a situation where they can help, hurt, or ignore someone in need, and there is no cost to the subject of picking any of the three options. But they get no reward for doing the good deed, and no one is watching.
(Of course this experiment is sort of impossible by design, cuz the experimenter has to be watching)
How many people choose to do the good deed without social affirmation of their good deed?
Maybe I'll reconsider pursuing that PhD in Economics.
I'm undecided on the matter, but the $20 thing is clearly not self-less altruism. Someone willing to spend $20 to prove they're "right"? I'm just not convinced.
Your experiment sounds interesting. I worry that people would still expect to be judged for it though (I mean, if they know they're participating in an experiment, they're expecting the results to be recorded and/or being watched, as you say). Also I expect that decades of acting a certain way due to being observed by society will form some pretty strong habits. Sounds fascinating none-the-less :)
* Bill my credit card $20, donate to a pool to send to http://www.againstmalaria.com or somesuch. * Spend $20 of the researchers' money on fresh vegetables, and throw them in the trash. * Do nothing.
FRFY, Jeesh.
And it's Josh. Josh Ellis. Since you sort-of asked.
You might as well have said go to a Mexican neighborhood and buy some weed and smoke out on the corner, or say go to a Black neighborhood and buy some crack and smoke it in the car, and then check out how fucked up the situation is.
Or how about go to the trailer park, buy some speed, snort it and check out how jacked up the hillbillies are.
I read the whole article, and even share some of your sentiments, but that one part really upset me. It kind of killed the article for me.
On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time being poor and being around poor people -- in the ghetto, in rural trailer parks, etc -- and actually, in my extensive experience, poor people do tend to be heavy drinkers. Are you seriously suggesting that sitting around in the hood getting your beer on isn't a staple of working class life? If so, we've been experiencing completely different parts of America.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/drinking-statistic...
The one big difference is how and when people drink. I think poor people tend to drink at home, maybe in the yard, out in the sun, but don't drink at bars. Middle class people are more likely to drink at bars, or drink indoors at home. That's what you do when you have more money and nicer interiors. :) (And it's probably easy to quit drinking when you can't afford it.)
The exception might be winos and alkies, who are poor because they are alkies. I think the constant presence of socially non-functional addicts in poor communities is probably a contributor to the stats in the linked article.
And that article states something that I mentioned in another comment: that people with more money drink to socialize and network.
[Edit: I can see how the statement would work for that audience... but it's still a damaging stereotype. Now we know it's not grounded in fact, and worse than I thought.]