I've met him at a couple of raves back in the 1990s back when he was basically wandering around the rave scene. My impression: brilliant guy, but incredibly eccentric.
I don't know much more about him beyond Wiki articles etc., but apparently he has had a bit of a tough time employment wise, due to a combination of his phone fraud convictions and his eccentric personality. This despite his heavy tie-in to early Apple history, and a fairly strong coding resume. Then again, from what I saw, his personality is not the type that would embrace Standard Corporate to begin with, I'm sure. But said personality means he never got rewarded much for what he did. If I remember right, he actually had to crowdfund for some medical issues recently. I think its fair to say at any rate that his talent potential ended up being underutilized.
You are right that it's possible that there are more opportunities for these sort of weirdos, but in order for that to exist, there has to be a space for the small corporation that is more willing to give eccentricity space. One of the dangers of corporate consolidation is exactly this: large corporations are probably more likely to exclude people with mild criminal records because checklists, and they are less likely to give space to people that don't fit into corporate cultures. Consolidation tends to kill innovation; perhaps this is one of the ways.
Likewise, from a university perspective, it won't matter as much if Big University kills off culture that "doesn't fit in" if there are small universities that welcome the eccentric weirdo. However, if only the Big University Degree matters in life, then it's also entirely possible for the eccentric but brilliant weirdos will end up being outside the system. Maybe they will form their own collective and create something new. The alternative is the Draper like scenario where one more just drifts.
You're completely missing GPs point, which is specifically about politics. Talking about an "interesting SaSS" is a red herring.
In fact, I would be disappointed if it was meant to be about politics because it'd come across as an attempt to shoehorn politics into a discussion about much broader social trends
This sort of thing is a prime example of politics, the failure to recognise that is harmful to your understanding.
Politics isnt just voting for congress-critters and presidents.
I also don't particularly appreciate the tone of your replies and especially statements like "the failure to recognise that is harmful to your understanding", which come across as somewhat condescending and less about seeking a proper conversation than about attempting to lecture.
So I won't be replying further to this thread.
Just as many as there used to be, it's just never been easy. Actually I thought about it some more, and there are actually probably more opportunities today than before with the internet and the democratization of knowledge.
> Woz and Jobs started out in business selling blue boxes to illegal bookmakers.
> Imagine a world in which they had been subject to the modern surveillance panopticon and the sort of prosecutorial malice that was levelled against Aaron Swartz.
I think you're looking at it wrong, Woz and Jobs started selling niche items directly to a small group of customers, that still exists today, they just wouldn't be selling blue boxes, maybe it'd be an interesting SaSS today.