

I thought we were hackers. - burningion
http://www.kpkaiser.com/mindhack/i-thought-we-were-hackers/

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rockmeamedee
So, there are two main points made in this essay.

The smaller, more confused point OP makes that actually applies to everybody:
Everybody feels like they're not up to par, that they just need X more ($,
followers, social proof) and then they'll be happy. I don't really know if we
can just change a systemic, individual view like our evolutionary 'inadequacy'
(never having enough) so easily, it's so deeply ingrained into our physiology.
We've had a lot of people and a few religions/philosophies attempt that.

The more clear point is a better version of one that HN has seen for a few
weeks now, that we've gone astray from our roots of playing with things and
creating fantastic technologies. Worse, we use our time to make apps that
distract people instead of helping them.

I wasn't around, but from what I've been told the 'good old days', when the
music was better, kids respected their elders, and in this example, the
hackers had heart and never really existed.

However, what OP says about our current world really feels true. I'm in
college and it really feels like there's pressure to make something shiny,
maybe SoLoMo, maybe Open Graph, but something that in the end isn't profoundly
useful. A good example is Dan Shipper, with wheremyfriends.be. It was a little
app that shows you where you friends are, geographically. Mashable called him
"Future Zuckerberg". I understand that example may be a bit extreme, but
really, more and more of my friends are pushed to making things like this.

This is sad. The HN community is likely a contributing factor, because in the
aggregate we all like shiny things like yc valuations, spaceX costs and AWS
stats. For a group of people who pride themselves on liking "real" things that
make a difference, we're quite bad at it.

I don't know. It's intrinsically hard to measure unsexy things like starvation
in Africa or access to clean water around the world. Maybe their lack of
visibility makes them unsexy. Maybe now we have better tools to do important
things, and they're not as visible. Does anyone have an answer to how we might
solve this?

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guylhem
Spot on. Social media is a nice achievement, but we can do much better as a
specie.

Let's build things! Let put humans outside the solar system!

Let's dream big!!

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allanblocker
I'm not a hacker but I think this is relevant to everyone, especially young
professional males. Good stuff, dude.

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far-I
best blog post I read in a while. It's real and tells it like it is. The
process that matters.

