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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>People often accuse people in Silicon Valley of working on things that don’t matter. Often they’re right. But many very important things start out looking as if they don’t matter

Not really. And the counter-examples he gives either didn't look trivial at first (the iPhone: actually everyone gapsed upon its introduction), or aren't really "world changing" (Facebook, Twitter: just some social networks).

As for the "Arab Spring" thing. Revolutions happened all the time without them. There were huge movements and shakedowns throughout the sixties, seventies and eighties, including in the Arab world (Iranian revolution anyone?). It's mostly Silicon Valley and western media bullshitting that made some believe Twitter et co role in Egypt etc was "crucial". Plus it's easy to make starts out of the few Egyptians who tweet etc, and are usually of the more affluent and easier to talk to the press classes).

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I find it quite mindblowing that people on HN can dismiss Facebook/Twitter as "just some social networks" that aren't "world changing".

Maybe you are all high and mighty and don't use "just some social networks", but they have definitely changed the world, in HUGE ways. I would say facebook's global permeation (circa 2009) is probably the most world-changing thing since global consumer internet availability (approx 1998?).

Just the other day, we on HN watched as a hotel business most likely crumbled because of worldwide attention on such social media [1]. Similarly, entire businesses are livelihoods are being built upon being visible on facebook. News travels like wildfire, opinions can make CEOs step down, a viral video can turn a beginner musician into a contemporary sensation, the list is endless.

How does one deny that these things have changed the world compared to before? They may not be all good changes, or any of them good changes, but they have changed the world, in huge ways, and we had best learn to accept it and take it into account in our lives.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8131162

Edited to actually add link.

Because news already traveled like wildfire. Its just didn't make it out to the people who weren't actually involved as often as it does now.

By that argument, no individual product or platform is truly important because everything is just built on what came before. Things that seem truly revolutionary are, more often than not, incremental changes on previous ideas that were easier to miss. As such, many movements and uprisings may be largely inevitable, and probably aren't the result of individual products like Facebook and Twitter, because they could've happened without them.

But that line of thinking is COMPLETELY missing the forest for the trees.

The world changes exactly because of such products -- specifically, because of the confluence of every idea and product up until that point in history. The Arab Spring may have been largely inevitable, but it was spurred by everything leading up to it, including the advent of social networks as a new communication platform.

>By that argument, no individual product or platform is truly important because everything is just built on what came before.

Only I never made such an argument. Email and the internet (www) for example were truly important.

Pshaw, those were just some protocols built on top of a network.

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