I agree that healthcare, transportation, education are vitally important areas that constant innovation will yield results for everyone, consumers, producers, governments, workers.
However, the social networking changes have enabled new knowledge pathways and relationships that simply could not have existed more than a decade ago. Sure, much of it is just superfluous fluff and inane posturing. But then, probably the majority of information transmitted over the telegraph, then the telephone, and now the internet has always been inane banter and useless chatting.
But just because telegrams were full of news about new babies, birthday wishes and promotion announcements didn't devalue the worth of the nascent communications industry.
What happens when new ways of communicating occur is that entirely new ways of working and collaborating grow out of it.
In just about every case, connecting with people leads to greater understanding, tolerance, and entirely new knowledge patterns.
Will there be high-profile social networking flameouts? Yes.
Will the future of communication, relationships, production and consumption be shaped by these patterns? Undoubtedly yes.
It seems galling to many that optimising day-to-day communications between friends gets more attention than healthcare, but humans are a social species. Chatting and sharing information has always been at the core of being human. If a core function of being human improves, surely humanity itself has been improved?
I believe the parent's main point is that there are plenty of fields in which longer-term thinking is possible. I think there is a further subpoint that these fields have Real Problems to which a competent solution will bring predictable, concrete wealth to both founders and society.
It's the difference between finding a problem and figuring out what technological change can address it, vs finding a cool new technology and looking around for some sort of problem to apply it. The later approach produces a lot of imagined problems and business failures.
One weakness in SV monoculture is the preponderance of kids who have never done anything but tech; the only Real Problems they know about are basic human drives like communication and how to find the best local happy hour. Not that this doesn't produce some occasional spectacular successes, but it keeps the-best-and-the-brightest all playing in a very expensive tournament with little social value generated by 4th+ place finishers.
The contrarian in me thinks that fresh CS grads who want to be entrepreneurs should immediately take non-programming jobs in some boring old-line industry like banking or retail or government and spend a year learning the problem domain. Then sit down to figure out what software to write. Or put it this way: I really don't care about Twitter or Foursquare or even Facebook. I'd pay good money for a Banksimple invite.
I agree that healthcare, transportation, education are vitally important areas that constant innovation will yield results for everyone, consumers, producers, governments, workers.
However, the social networking changes have enabled new knowledge pathways and relationships that simply could not have existed more than a decade ago. Sure, much of it is just superfluous fluff and inane posturing. But then, probably the majority of information transmitted over the telegraph, then the telephone, and now the internet has always been inane banter and useless chatting.
But just because telegrams were full of news about new babies, birthday wishes and promotion announcements didn't devalue the worth of the nascent communications industry.
What happens when new ways of communicating occur is that entirely new ways of working and collaborating grow out of it.
In just about every case, connecting with people leads to greater understanding, tolerance, and entirely new knowledge patterns.
Will there be high-profile social networking flameouts? Yes. Will the future of communication, relationships, production and consumption be shaped by these patterns? Undoubtedly yes.
It seems galling to many that optimising day-to-day communications between friends gets more attention than healthcare, but humans are a social species. Chatting and sharing information has always been at the core of being human. If a core function of being human improves, surely humanity itself has been improved?