
Ask HN: Are the pioneers dead? - itsmefaz
Having been in the industry for the past 5 years, I have come to this very crude observation that the computing industry is out of breathtaking ideas. I believe this has to do with the lack of true entrepreneurship.<p>True entrepreneurship, is when one goes on a journey to finding truly great ideas. Great ideas take a very long time to generate and an equally long time to be properly executed.<p>I have also come to the conclusion that the entrepreneurs and business people around got into starting the business as they were not skilled enough for the competing job market. And this is the escape route they choose to stay relevant. I believe this lack of required skills and true entrepreneurship is the reason there are too many not-so-skilled entrepreneurs.<p>So, the question I was trying to ask myself and the community is that where are all the pioneers, the true entrepreneurs, the engineers? And have you ever come across such individuals?
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hyperpallium
You're not alone. Alan Kay asks if there's been any new ideas in computer
science in the past 50 years:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-
new-i...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-
inventions-in-computing-since-1980)

He'd previously named spreadsheets and all the stuff from PARC:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/357813/remembering-a-
quo...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/357813/remembering-a-quote-from-
alan-kay)

\---

We're probably in a commercialization/application phase of ideas. For example,
lisp ideas are still being applied in other languages.

Perhaps all the low-hanging fruit has been gotten?

Or perhaps it's a bit like DNA and RNA transfer: the most ancient part of all
livings things. It's probably not optimal, but you make faster progress by
building atop it rather than starting over. Similar for cell structure,
multicellular organization, neurons (worms have 'em), vertebrate anatomy,
mammal design etc.

Industry has a habit of reinventing the same ideas every decade or so, in a
different language, operating system etc.

\---

There _are_ new ideas, though mostly a combination of existing ideas at this
point. The last example I noticed, several years ago, was _jq_ , which applies
unix streams and haskell to json processing. (Though its author wasn't an
entrepreneur.)

\---

I suspect there are golden ideas just one or two steps off the beaten track.
But how much work they'd be to productize (and whether the market would adopt
them) is another question...

If no one else is doing it, it's an opportunity - for you.

~~~
itsmefaz
Thanks for a very good summary. I especially like your correlation with
regards to our evolution. That made very good sense.

Apart from Alan Kay are there any other influencers that I might find
interesting?

~~~
hyperpallium
Not that I know of, he's the big critic of compsci progress.

Peter Norvig's argument with Noam Chomsky on AI as a _science_ is interesting,
to do with knowing what we're doing.

More generally and optimistically on progress, you might consider Buckminster
Fuller (and Ray Kurzweil).

~~~
itsmefaz
Thanks

------
TheSpiceIsLife
Are you sure you're not playing a game of 'No true Scotsman' here?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman)

~~~
itsmefaz
Thanks for reminding me this. I see the similarity with me going through a
similar phase. However, I always try to coarse correct my arguments and
ideologies along the way to reach a proper objective.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Having said that ... I sort of believe the next massive technological
revolution will occur when we work out a way to manipulate energies one or
more orders of magnitude more dense than we presently can.

Presently we have approximately 2kW electric outlets, approximately 100kW
engines in our cars.

Imagine being able to manipulate 2MW at the home outlet, or 1GW in our
vehicles.

I don’t know what it would look like to be able to dissipate that much heat,
we’d have to improve conversion efficiency to limit the waste heat.

I’m just thinking if we could work out how to handle that much power it would
be truly revolutionary off-the-planet sort of business.

~~~
itsmefaz
Thanks.. I didn't think of this problem.

