That is dangerous - you could very well be missing out on very important features all along the way without ever knowing it, wasting tons of time and productivity in process. This happens also when you directly start using an appliance without reading its manual first.
A major contribution by tech industry is how it fundamentally transform the way we live, work and interact, in a mostly positive way towards higher efficiency. The effect is everywhere. I don't think you can find many tech companies which are not contributing something to this landscape. Are some of them possibly "more trivial" than others in a perspective? Might be. But it doesn't change the fact that they are having positive impacts on the world.
By "physical world" we don't necessarily have to do some groundbreaking theoretical physics discovery. Software like online collaboration tools, marketplace apps and search engines have already greatly transformed the way people interact and work. Isn't that change "physical"? Way too many people who study "hard science" end up being able to contribute nothing and just drop out of the field, or just passing their time on pointless researches supported by funds. The field was already overpopulated and what makes it worse is that its hard problems are few to come by and solving them requires luck. If you are out of luck then you're wasting your life. This is different from the world of software where you are almost always doing things that have an immediate positive effect on the lives around you.
We also have one in China, in the Forbidden City. It was a present by certain western diplomat in 1700s/1800s. I'm pretty sure this kind of thing was actually quite popular back at that time.
Text existed before the proliferation of other media probably because it was primitive and inferior. Chimpanzees lived for eternity before human beings appeared. I don't see anything great in that. We didn't use a lot of multimedia in the beginning, primarily because of tech limits. Now that the conditions are ripe, why not? If everybody is using more and more of it, it's for a reason. Apple and MS brought about a revolution, exactly because they unlocked the killer feature that was the GUI. Ask if many of us would like to go back to the 80s regarding computer UI, that would be a nightmare. I certainly feel a 2-min video overview of product features is tons better than an one-hour read. Images and in general sensory feelings are always much more natural to human beings, which in essence are still a kind of animal. Texts were invented to maintain civilizations and enforce social hierarchies, but it was never ever natural nor great in this matter.
The Twitter icon takes a lot of space in a digital form, yet it only takes one minute to draw by hand, while the author probably wrote for an hour.
In all it's just a pointless, childish and tunnel-sighted rant. "Bet" on text? Bet what? I'm quite amused by the number of upvotes here. Though gladly I see many sane counterarguments high up there also, which is quite reassuring :)
You certainly have to make some trade offs. But as long as you achieved what you want to do, how could that cost be "unacceptable" in any sense? You expected it and wholeheartedly embraced its existence in the very first place!
Such a reaction is borderline ridiculous and coward. Others like Wozniack are mature and strong enough and are definitely able to sustain a business well. Several levels apart!
However his narrative sounds more like something of a bad self-deception which doesn't make any sense at all and will probably make him a worse person.
Yeah, most adults only get something when they're genuinely surprised, wrong or lost. But the problem is, in many of such occasions the changes are negative and make you worse than your previous self, without you being genuinely able to tell them apart. So while open to new ideas, we should always maintain our core values and recognitions and guard them carefully, stoic to surprises and things.
Ayn Rand? What good does that kind of stuff do at all anyways? If you want some libertarian ideas, fine, there are countless philosophers out there for you to cite, even Robert Nozick. But Ayn Rand? That's just disgusting beyond belief, seriously.
I think what people dislike about this statement is how downbeat and escapist he sounds.
> If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately.
Frankly I can't think of anybody who would be glad to hear such a almost childish and impetus irresponsible statement. Not to mention from the mouth of somebody who created so many wonderful things altogether.
What totally shocks me here is the whopping ignorance and lack of even the least bit of effort of understanding shown in the pathetic comments. Are really so many Americans brainwashed to such a crazy extent? Well anyways it makes me sick.
I can never imagine how would a university/its various student organizations get their messages through to students, without email. I went on a full-year exchange to Chile, where the email service simply is useless and everybody(including university officials) seems to rely on Facebook, which to me was simply crazy. Why would something like FB be used for any serious business? How would they suppose that everybody has a FB account and likes to use it? That was a truly horrible experience, especially for a Social Network avoider like me.
Read some Peter Thiel and he will tell you that in the ideal startup there should be no "competition" at all. Competition is a horrible and destructive thing.
Although, as a fact you have to realize that many people who excel in competition for example professional athletes keep an exceptionally good balance. In fact those at the top of competitions are almost always those who are very good at keeping balance. So your theory simply doesn't hold.
Not exactly. Many people don't realize the situation at all. And also, there are many ways to find and reserve time for things you love, which are not necessarily related with/constrained by your work at all. People just fall into a vicious cycle so that they gradually forget to do those things altogether, and let things continue deteriorating.
What kind of pervert, anti-human-nature "culture" and "philosophy" you are talking about? Haven't they victimized and taken the happiness away from enough people already? Not to mention that being a Brazilian I suppose you should appreciate the positive value of sex very well?
It's implied. If it needs explicit mentioning then probably there's something wrong with the culture because there's no reason that normal person wouldn't consider it.
Also ask Investment Banking people. From what I hear, they lead a life at least as busy as ours, and what's worse is that they often cannot control what urgent tasks are shoved into their faces.
I call the talk on "programmer working long hours" stereotype and myopia.
Personally I think he exactly hit the spot. A few years ago I regularly did things that I loved so I was achieving in various aspects and feeling happy although doing a lot. But later some interpersonal relationships went awry, the habit was broken and my life descended into a mess, without myself really realizing it. These two years I’ve been doing much less yet feeling much more burnt out and ineffective than I previously was, indeed because I have been kept from those regular things that I love for too long. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it in the beginning and probably even have already forgotten about it gradually. His wording of “epiphany” is exact.
Also, I think many of you here are simply misinterpreting what he means.
Why something you love and is important to you have to be something in your work?
Just as he himself says, he sets multiple rewards for himself, daily, weekly, monthly.
Where does he say that they are work-related at all?
"Too much media/computer use isn't good for your brain. I worry computers are making people less creative in some ways, and too much time online is certainly bad for your soul. You need sunlight, air, dirt."
Such statements abound but actually don't make much sense. It's just the progress our society is making and we should be proud and happy of it because it absolutely enhances our productivity. People just need to adapt to new things over time and overcome their resistance. I bet when pen and paper became popular similar statements were made of them! Which are of course quite nonsensical examined by time.
It doesn't make much sense and looks utterly paranoid. To me, all this "privacy" thing looks more like a hype than something of real importance, and the companies like Apple are taking advantage of such a mentality. Suppose you operate a store, what would you want to do? Obviously collecting information to improve user experience is only natural. Put it this way: If, at the end of the shopping, somebody from the mall approaches you and asks you to fill out a survey about your shopping experience and what could be improved, would you comply? Probably one half of us will. Then why, a method which is not intrusive, does not take your precious time, and doesn't waste human resource on the part of the mall, would get such a strong reaction of yours? Is it really the "rationality" you boast? I totally doubt it. It's more likely pretensive overreaction.