Ask YC: what is your most important idea?

Re:Ask YC: what is your most important idea? by neilk on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @02:42AM (#260199)

Lao-Tzu would argue that being of lasting significance, is, well, insignificant:

   Of the best leaders
   When the task is accomplished
   The people will remark
   We have done it ourselves.

The people who made TCP/IP and HTTP are among the greatest benefactors to humankind in the past 20 years. Yet hardly anyone knows who they are, and I doubt they will make the history books. Because they were so successful, their achievement now seems like an impersonal product of the age. If only!

All the internet entrepreneurs, all the ones who became richer than Croesus - their achievement was to become gatekeepers for a zillionth of the wealth that the Internet and the Web have bestowed on the world. And then they became targets for other people, who had piled up maybe a zillionth and a half of that wealth, and people like Arrington can't shut up about them.

If you want to change the world, and the people know your name, you're doing it wrong.

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Re:Ask YC: what is your most important idea? by VarunGupta on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @03:35AM (#260223)

I think, to be remembered for long time it's not about the field or occupation with which a personality is associated but it depends on the quantum of fundamental shift that he/she brings in the evolution of civilizations. eg: Newton and Einstein will be remembered for the centuries to come though other brilliant physicists will not. Humanity will respect Wright brothers for many ages to come, though the case may not be same for the person who invented jet engine.

May be their original work is not in much use these days but they opened a new domains for future generations to work on and that created the shift.

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Re:Ask YC: what is your most important idea? by altay on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @05:17AM (#260262)

Or -- just playing devil's advocate here -- perhaps it's a matter of PR... e.g., Edison vs. Tesla.

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Re:Ask YC: what is your most important idea? by tc7 on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @08:55AM (#260406)

On significance, I'm not so interested in people remembering me in 200 years as being able to look back before I die and know that I did something really important. (What that important thing is, I don't know yet.)

Like neilk says, fame and impact in many cases don't correlate. And that's okay. The people that made TCP/IP are/were probably satisfied with what they'd accomplished, and beyond that, who cares.

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Re:Ask YC: what is your most important idea? by andreyf on Tuesday July 29, 2008 @10:18AM (#260493)

I should definitely have said "which of your work would you want to be used/remembered?", thanks for pointing it out.

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