People are losing their minds over this. Barely anything web3 has even been built yet. Perhaps it never will. Still, the idea that young people want to do things differently is so terrifying to these geocity boomers that they must churn out pamphlets like their life depends on it. Embarassing.
Yes, it’s definitely not that older people with experience understand why this is a bad idea.
The hubris of youth is useful for bringing change, but experience shows that often the effects of that change are poorly understood and often cause significant issues.
Why do you think this is an age thing? I know plenty of older people that are wild about anything blockchain related and plenty of younger people who despise it all.
saw this recently on HN: Men not at work: Why so many men aged 25 to 54 are not working[1]. I know that "not working" and "not leaving your bedroom" are differnt things, but maybe that's what makes it "American".
Let's assume that AI does explode, and it does obsolete jobs like a steamroller in a glass sculpture exhibition.
Which culture is best prepared, by its nature, to face the tremendous tsunami of unemployment in a way that minimizes overall suffering and leads to the best long-term outcome?
Take your pick from: american "bootstraps culture", asian post-confucianism, west european "humane capitalism", east european post-communism, south asian (okay: indian) semi-socialism, etc, etc.
P.S.: The designations are a little bit tongue in cheek, don't take them literally.
With the trend towards automation, hikikomori are just ahead of the curve. I am sure there will come a day when almost anyone will be able to "retreat" in their own space and never leave again. The recluse will create worlds and experiences where they spend their time, and it will become very difficult to reach them, if not impossible.
Before automation, people had to reach out, to meet other people in order to survive. Maybe in Japan they used "parents" as an automation of sort, in order to separate themselves from other people, but with the advent of internet and home deliveries, it becomes easier and easier to be a recluse. Especially that there is company and a whole culture around this lifestyle.
I am sure there will come a day when almost anyone will be able to "retreat" in their own space and never leave again.
"The Machine Stops", by E. M. Forster, is the classic on this. Published in 1909, it doesn't sound dated today.
"Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance. There are no apertures for ventilation, yet the air is fresh. There are no musical instruments, and yet, at the moment that my meditation opens, this room is throbbing with melodious sounds. An armchair is in the centre, by its side a reading-desk - that is all the furniture. And in the armchair there sits a swaddled lump of flesh - a woman, about five feet high, with a face as white as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs."
...
"Vashanti's next move was to turn off the isolation switch, and all the accumulations of the last three minutes burst upon her. The room was filled with the noise of bells, and speaking-tubes. What was the new food like? Could she recommend it? Has she had any ideas lately? Might one tell her one's own ideas? Would she make an engagement to visit the public nurseries at an early date? - say this day month."
Actually, I think they can (also be entrepreneurs and artists) They just can't all be successful ones. However, due to the non-linearity of success, the winners would offset the losers, which is also why incubators like y combinator can make a profit.
So what it boils down to really is a social issue, where you have to find a way to ensure a fair treatment of the losers. Theoretically they were just as likely to be huge successes (I think this is especially true for artists) as those who actually turned out to be. If that wasn't true one could easily run a successful incubator on their own.
However, culturally, the idea of compensating the losers seems alien (and even outrageous in some places) as we used to live in a economy with a much more linear relationship between effort and return. I guess this is why ideas like 'basic income' have such a hard time being even discussed, although they would address the issue, maybe even solve it.
What sales figures won't tell you though is how well people are doing who choose not to buy or can't afford those things.
Also, your argument does not account for tomorrows sales figures, which might look very different, as executives from any industry that software has replaced can tell you. Of course that could never happen to us.
This is a rather unusual comment and this link is probably the wrong place to have this conversation, as hacker news is probably the wrong place in general.
Anyway, it's rather simple. It's just taking what we have seen in the past (people appropriating any kind of technology thrown at them [1]) and extending it into the future.
Is this the correct approach? Probably not.
I like to remind myself that there was a time when smoking was the thing to do. Little knowledge about potential dangers was available. Projections about future adaption of the habit might have looked similar.
[1]: Strictly speaking this is not true, since there is a huge cemetery of rejected technology that remains mostly invisible. Smartphones just turn out to be one of the technologies that have become widely accepted, creating a wrong impression overall.
I was terrified after reading this. Reminded me that I should live a bit healthier, not drink more coffee then water, got to sleep earlier, wake up earlier, maybe even exercise. But more important, it got me thinking. The non-routine kind of thinking. Read some old diary entries. Wrote a new one, after almost a year.
Actually Apple has just accomplished what privacy advocates around the world couldn't have done: Getting people concerned about the issue (by hitting them where it actually hurts: music taste).
I think it's a great and mostly innocent example (the music is really, really shitty though) of the problems that 'the cloud' poses.
I personally enjoyed this comment and this type of humor in general. It was witty, critical and open about it's satirical nature, distinguishing it from a troll post (which would disguise itself as genuine extremist view). Unfortunately the community doesn't seem to enjoy it as much as I do. Quite the opposite actually.
The comment specifically touches the following issues.
* The community's overall pro-western tendency
* Pointing out that the parent comment has been one of the few moderate ones in a thread that has otherwise been rather 'emotionally charged'
As much as I enjoy the content and the discussions here, the lack of appreciation of satire has always puzzled me.
I disagree with the lottery notion.
There are two important differences:
In a lottery you know exactly what your odds of winning are and what the (best) possible outcomes are.
In the App Store on the other hand, the odds are more or less unknown (which is why this post is interesting in the first place, I guess).
They are also dependent on a variety of factors, including your marketing success, quality of the game, etc.
As an independent app developer it's difficult if not impossible to get a grip on those numbers.
On the other hand, if you are Kim Kardashian there are probably some calculations you can do that give you an idea about how well your game is going to do
(FYI: There is a Kim Kardashian game. Also a person named Kim Kardashian)
The second difference to a lottery is, that in the App Store you do not have an upper bound for your success.
It could be anything form zero (most likely) to flappy-bird-crazy and beyond.
So do these differences matter after all?
Yes, because they dictate what kind of game you have to make, or in other words what kind of risks you are able to take:
While major publishers have to stick to "mee-too" variations of game concepts that are known to work, you as a hobbyist can try out radical ideas. Things that are "never going to work".
You face a limited amount of loss (the time it takes to make the game) but face a (virtually) unbound gain.
This also means that the 1-week variety is much more promising, just not the "mee-too" ones.
Speaking of irrational fears: I always fear that I forgot my keys while leaving my flat. Now I know that I just need to post some holiday pictures of myself on instagram and eventually somebody will show up to help me get back in - for free!
