News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow.

Re:Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow by aristus on Monday May 27, 2013 @11:05PM (#5777794)
I'm curious why no one mentions Unimix, memorably described by Roy Blount Jr as "Purina Famine Chow", made and distributed by disaster relief organizations. This stuff has been done before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unimix

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Soylent: Gruel today, gruel tomorrow by jacques_chester on Monday May 27, 2013 @11:30PM (#5777864)
It gets mentioned most times that soylent is raised.

The thing is that soylent is a perfect storm of PR.

Lone genius has brilliant insight, develops perfect food. Just like those 60s pulp SF novels where people eat food in pill form! Why did nobody think of this before?

Lots of things that become popular or widespread do so because of the narrative they fit into.

For example, which story will get published:

"22 year old PhD student corrects famous scientist"

or

"14 year old student corrects famous scientist".

People correct famous scientists all the time, that's how science works. But it is the narrative (brilliant youngster vs establishment) that makes it a story worth printing.

And if a story is good enough, journalists won't look too hard at it. They're called "Too Good to Check" stories.

[ Parent | on HN ]