Re:Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
by zeemonkee on Sunday October 02, 2011 @03:53AM
(#3062325)
There is very little cultural innovation either - popular entertainment nowadays consists of reboots, prequels, sequels, and karaoke hits (American Idol and the like). It's part of the same symptom I think of stagnant, litigious, bottom-line driven, risk-averse management Stephenson talks about - and it's strangling not only our technological innovation but all forms of creativity.
Re:Neal Stephenson: Innovation Starvation
by amcintyre on Saturday October 01, 2011 @02:49PM
(#3060771)
> Drop the entertainment ideas, and work on something good for the world.
That's one of the things that bugs me most about the job market, at least where I live: 95+% of the jobs are completely focused on entertainment or social media.
Sure, there are some interesting technical problems in those spaces, but once my student loans are gone and I can afford the risk (and pay cut) of going to work on something more likely to be good for the world, I plan to do so.
As a society, almost nothing in the scope of the Big Ideas of the 1900s-1950 era has come to pass in the last 30 years. Our science fiction writers write of hideous futures we don't want to live in. Our movies present soap operas in space, in the name of science fiction. The education system of the pre-50s, maligned as it is, produced better innovators and more good ideas than what is alllowed today.
Wake up and smell the tomatoes. Things are bad, and not getting better. Drop the entertainment ideas, and work on something good for the world.
A few weeks ago, Khan Academy was hiring.