That is completely wrong from my experience. By the same logic the mobile phone didn't improve anything because you could already call people on land lines (and indeed, people argued exactly that). E-mail didn't improve anything, rather it was damaging, because people stopped writing letters.
Facebook has improved my life. A lot. It has enabled (not enhanced, enabled) loose but very enjoyable contact with acquaintances I hadn't seen for ten years. The light-weight way of staying in touch is perfect for keeping associated with my network in my former city after I moved. I get a steady stream of pics and status updates from my sister and her kids. People I've met travelling years ago suddenly mention they're coming through my city, and we catch up, or vice versa.
All of these COULD be facilitated using pre-Facebook technology, but pre-Facebook experiences suggests that they didn't.
I agree though, we need more of these companies. I think of all the things that we could be doing, and I remember how I used to want to change the world before running a business got in the way. Sometimes you need an opportunity that puts you in a position to do something that truly fulfils your dreams, as Elon Musk did with PayPal.
Can only hope some of us are observant enough to have our preparation meet with opportunity.
I know I have. Many more times than I care to admit.
>it is that too many companies are not doing things worthy of hackers.
Excellent. And since I always ask this question of people who lament the status quo:
What did you have in mind?
Make personal analytics useful (something like http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/09/stephen-wolfram-reveals-t..., but in a way that is actually useful to normal people).
Link the offline and online into one seamless reality (google glass)
If I had to dream about the future and what it should be we're aiming for, it'd be joint universal augmented network access. I want to live in a world like this one --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denno_Coil
Conceptually, I think this is similar to the last-mile broadband problem[1] - it's not economical to lay fiber to the customer's home unless the customer lives in an urban/reasonably densely populated area. Similarly, if you want to go from transport hub to transport hub (bus/rail station, airport etc.) that's no problem, but getting from the transport hub to your home ranges from expensive and awkward to impossible, depending on how far you live from the transport hub.
Self-driving cars solve this problem. Who cares if you have a 100 mile commute, if you can snooze all the way? Just order the car for a set time every morning to allow enough time for the drive and go back to sleep on the way.
Compare Europe and New York's Tri-State-Area to Boston or BART.
So while I don't necessarily expect people to have something in mind, I always hope they do.
Small data. My data. A 1999 google like interface into an index of me: my email, my documents, images and video that I've collected. Nice to haves would be a copy of the various conversations I have had on third party social media sites.
This index should be set up in a way that I can easily include a copy of it in my Trust that will pass my assets to my daughter (note - I am increasingly thinking that the raw data, much of what either lives in the cloud or gets backed up to CrashPlan, is an asset that should be part of the an Estate that gets passed to the next generation). She should be able to add to it when she is a old enough and (if I am so lucky) my grandchildren's grandchildren should be able to search for vague terms in the stories that their great grandmother (my daughter) told them when they were young. They will get links to relevant emails or documents that help them explore the past. They will be able to see the connections between images takes a the same time or location in a way that lets them explore their history. As I understand this tool better I will be able to narrate a one way version of my story to those of future generations.
As I said above, a tool like this would solve my problem. Do you think it would be useful to a computer literate, smart but non hacker/programmer type? Any ideas on how you think one should approach this problem?
I hate to sound all Statler-and-Waldorf on you, but DO-HO-HO-HO!!!!!
Technology is not going to change our social system. Our technology is fine and dandy. Our social system is increasingly shitty.
So the real question is: how do you take anti-profitable activities like fixing our social system (ie: wealth redistribution) and make them profitable?
Everyone is convinced -- because the people who work in marketing are happy because they can sell ads -- that social media is an important thing. It is not.
Social media is people doing what they were already doing, only more often and anywhere. Flirting with girls, talking with friends, etc. Making these activities digital is not changing society or improving lives. It is the same society and the same lives, with more time spent on these activities. Never has anyone gone to bed thinking "Gosh, I wish I had spent more time looking at funny pictures of strangers today." People often go to bed regretting not doing what they could have done when instead they were on Facebook and Twitter and [insert the names of 90% of the startups you have heard of].
Every founder will go on and on about "changing the world" if you let him. This is as if changing the world were something worth doing for its own sake. If you see a problem that is worth fixing and you fix it, then the change effected is important and even virtuous. But the key is that problem must be worth solving. Just because a petulant and spoiled American wants his iced mocha faster does not mean that speeding up sales of mocha is a worthy problem. Can you make money doing it? Probably.
I went to school to become an engineer (I'm 24) because I thought that computers and the internet were going to make invention and innovation possible even for people who did not work for industrial laboratories. Maybe the hugely reduced barriers to entry into the technology sector that resulted from cheap computers and good programming tools would lead young and eager people of brilliance to found ambitious companies to finally -- aren't we all sick of being exasperated by the mediocrity of culture and politics in the past 20 years? -- steer human life into better modes of existence and a new frontier of boldness. Sure, the internet cannot do this all on its own, but is such a powerful and promising tool, that maybe it would start things.
This has not happened. There are a few gems like SpaceX and Willow Garage that seek out challenge in this way, but they are doing it independent of the cheapness and openness that computers now allow. Worse, many of the companies that have been founded are dedicated to aggressively ruining the internet by making it a place for sucking up private information, showing ads, and selling the same old useless junk.
What it seems to me this article is about is that innovation in technology right now is about money, not about betterment. A billion dollars was just spent on Instagram. To do what? If you are so in the bubble of the "startup world" that you do not see the self-evident absurdity of a situation in which that is a possible and reasonable event, you are become blinded.
Stop thinking like a marketer and think like an inventor with balls. Stop trying to get rich unless you are getting rich by doing something that is worth doing.
I write this as someone who honestly loves technology, hacking, the hacker ethic, and HN, but I walk around Palo Alto every day being slowly crushed by disappointment. The problem is not that the good hackers are being spread across too many companies, it is that too many companies are not doing things worthy of hackers.