
I’m Bored. What’s Next? - nhangen
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/30/im-bored-whats-next/
======
SideburnsOfDoom
* _What's here that wasn't here in 2007?_

Robots are still rising. Drones too. Voice recognition for everyone with Siri
and the equivalent on Android. Natural language queries in Wolfram Alpha.

Cheap, reliable 3d motion detection via kinect.

3d printing. Tissue printing and a $99 genetic scan <https://www.23andme.com/>

Cheap SSDs.

Self driving cars.

Raspberry Pi boards.

iPads (I had to check that one - the first iPad launch was just recently in
April 2010!) and competing Android and windows tablets.

github.

* _Or these lists:_

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-
beca...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-
science-facts-in-2)

[http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-
that-...](http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-
true-in-2012)

* _Things that were new and not so well known in 2007, but are big now:_

The rise of online education via Khan academy, Coursera and Udacity.

Workable electric cars.

Twitter.

Arduino boards.

git

~~~
enraged_camel
Out of all those things you listed, self-driving cars and maybe - just _maybe_
\- 3D printing are the only truly exciting things, at least in terms of their
potential to be disruptive.

~~~
swombat
Geesh, only two major paradigm-shifts emerging in one year. How tedious!

~~~
Eliezer
Neither of those are from 2012.

~~~
swombat
I think the argument is that they've been getting into the mainstream this
year...

I think the year that a new paradigm-shifting technology is first conceived
and then developed, and then implemented on any scale within a single year
will be a time to celebrate the end of humanity and the peak of the
singularity!... (if it ever happens)

------
pxlpshr
What a meta post. Arrington complaining about a problem his site perpetuated
by popularizing consumer tech. [1]

Maybe TechCrunch should step away from the desk/SF and put more reporters in
other cities on the ground, instead of relying on so much inbound pitching?
Technology, used loosely, is becoming an everyday aspect to many businesses so
maybe TC also needs to reconsider their editorial position, too. [1]

There are tons of other companies in cities around the US (and world) less
interested in getting caught up in the SF noise. Spending PR budget to target
TC just for some ego exposure amongst select group of peers at the cost of a
less targeted audience isn't a wise decision for most.

Austin has quiet a few smaller but sustaining tech companies doing pretty
interesting things on a regular basis; $AWAY, $BV, $SLAB, Chaotic Moon, Mass
Relevance, and numerous other fresh startups like Outbox [2] and DailyDot.com.
I'm sure same is true for other cities.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-
keep-y...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-keep-your-
new-years-resolutions-alive/)

Don't I have the USA Today and Mashable for this? Did AOL make this decision?

[2] Saving the USPS.
[http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-
st...](http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-startup-
takes-snail-mail-high-tech.html)

~~~
nhangen
I suppose you're right. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. For years, they
wouldn't fund or write about anything that wasn't a me-too product, and now he
complains that there's nothing but me-too products.

Thanks for finally waking up Michael.

------
jeffclark
Everyone in the tech world is going bananas over the same stuff. Technology
helping technology: things that make Facebook easier/harder to use, things
that make software development easier/harder to do, mobile this-that-and-
advertising.

BOOOOOR-IIIINNNGGG.

The companies that are doing _actually_ interesting things are using
technology to make non-tech stuff easier/better/faster/brighter: Uber, AirBnB,
Zipcar, that female-led startup connecting farmers with buyers, etc.

Technology for technology's sake is done and boring and short-sighted. We've
got news aggregators that aggregate other news aggregators. Mobile ad
platforms that resell ads from other mobile ad platforms. Photo-sharing apps
whose entire purpose is to create filters for other photo-sharing sites. And
it's all ad-supported.

Arrington's right: it's all just the same thing over and over, and it's
boring. And I never thought I'd agree with Arrington about anything.

~~~
ebiester
That startup is Vegetality. And why would it matter if it was started by a
woman in this context? (I can't wait until ~50% of startups are by women and
it's not considered exceptional.)

~~~
omni
Simple context would suggest that he was offering any details he remembered of
the startup in the hope that someone would recognize it. Let's not overreact.

------
raphman
Nice reply by Ray Cromwell:

> I love how Arrington, Thiel, Graham, and others spent years talking about
> how you don't need any college, promoted quick-buck social media startups
> with no plan, and kids fresh out of high school, and now they are sad there
> is no flying cars. [...]

[https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpc...](https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpcRnu)

~~~
akiselev
Humans have been talking about flying cars since the 60s. If we would have had
them by now, their creators would have been educated well before Thiel Graham
and Arrington.

------
groby_b
Sure, we only got self-driving cars, almost flawless speech recognition,
concordant natural language queries, "Minority Report"-like UIs, Google Glass,
space flight at 1/10th of the previous cost, 1GB fiber to the home,
dramatically cheaper solar power, garage gen tech, 22nm chips, we did a
spectacular landing on Mars, working Exoskeletons, the technology to find
planets that are only slightly bigger than earth,...

And Mr. Arrington is bored? Maybe he's just not paying attention.

~~~
Jayasimhan
Most of what you mentioned came from big companies with a $billion or more.
Mike is an Investor. When he says that innovation is not happening, its
probably because he is not seeing good ones starting up, i.e a new comer with
an amazing idea. We'll see the effect a few years from now, when most great
products come from Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple. It is probably that way
already.

Every decade has had a game changer who came in from no where. Who is going to
take away the 201x?

~~~
icebraining
Who was the game changer of the 2000s?

~~~
ritchiea
Google and Apple were probably the two biggest game changers of the 2000s.
Apple's being a resurgence and Google being a company founded at the very end
of the 90s.

------
dholowiski
Mike Arrington is bored with blogging. Does that mean he'll stop?

Personally I think we're on the edge of a revolution, with the rapid shrinking
(and increase in power) of computers, and Google boldly pushing into some
pretty deep AI.

Intelligent personal assistants. Self driving cars. Wearable augmented
reality.

There's going to be a lot of exciting stuff to write about in 2013.

~~~
fatalerrorx3
2013 is also going to be a big year for Healthcare IT, the HHS is moving to
open up clinical patient data via HHS. I doubt Google will venture again into
the healthcare space, given the recent failure of Google Health, but it's
going to be a turning point, they should have waited until the end of 2013 to
close it down!

~~~
zanny
> the HHS is moving to open up clinical patient data

Don't want to sound too cynical here, but give me a break. The health care
industry has resisted technology for 2 decades persistently, and any radical
revolution in medicine will have so many public hurdles beyond what has
already been dealt I don't see anything changing for Average Joes for decades
just because of inertia, the powers that be, and special interests.

I mean I still can't get medical care at all without cleaning out my bank
account because I'm uninsured. It is personal bias, but I'd rather see that
fixed first. $500 - $1000 a month in healthcare is obscene.

------
narrator
Kenyans now have $50 smart phones that exceed all but the latest phones in
capability. We have $50 android tablets. We have reached a sort of
technological plateau where stuff we consider awesome advanced technology is
more available than clean drinking water. The great stagnation cometh, the
center holds, things stick together more strongly than ever.

~~~
dredmorbius
All highly commendable projects.

There's no exit strategy, though, so VC aren't interested.

------
swalsh
I seem to recall reading a few weeks ago that VC money was starting to move
towards B2B companies. If that's true, you're not going to see a lot of
exciting tech blog worthy start-ups. You will see a lot of progress in
software, and real people will be receiving real value. In fact, i view that
as a really positive thing. We don't need another social network enabled live
drawing text-pad that opens a door. However my fiance definitely needs some
software to reduce some of the redundant unsexy work she has no time to do

------
scott_s
Try creating instead of commenting on what other create. It's more fun.

~~~
wallflower
Michael Arrington did try and fail to create once.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo>

~~~
scott_s
I had the impression that he did not really do creative work on that project,
but high level management. I may be wrong.

------
nhangen
As a software dev currently thinking through my 'next thing,' I find this
opinion refreshing. There's a lot of redundant and me-too software and it's
far too easy to fall into the trap of building another mobile/social/geo/photo
app.

I think hardware makers are doing a great job of pushing the envelop, but
software not so much.

The question is, what's next for software? At the time Twitter came out, it
was brand new...amazing...innovative. I can't recall feeling the same about
anything since.

My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next
thing, but the problem there is the barrier to entry is a bit higher, both in
terms of knowledge base and financial cost. That said, tech like Bluetooth LE
is making it easier than ever to try.

~~~
wallflower
> My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next
> thing

I've started hearing that embedded software control via cheap Android tablets
($50-$100)/hardware interfaces is beginning to take off and reducing the
barrier to entry. Pretty much, you can use a $75 Android tablet to control an
embedded device and drive the user interface. iPads are, frankly, a bit too
expensive for most hardware applications.

If I had the energy, I would champion an open-source project for niche
hobbyists who want to program a particular type of hardware (assuming their
particular hardware has some kind of serial/network relatively-open,
documented interface - something like ZigBee but less complicated maybe) but
aren't necessarily programmers. Build the project such that the UI and
hardware control layer run on Android - and can be abstracted out from the
actual hardware later. The UI is not going to be snazzy looking (sliding menu)
but reliable looking - like an industrial control but maybe a bit better.

~~~
rjbond3rd
Interesting. In the local hackerspace, for several years, I watched many
students struggle with a (very fine) graphical drag-n-drop programming tool
known as StarLogo TNG[0] (and Logo variants).

In the end, it seemed the brighter students destined for real programming were
relieved to get into a text editor. The "success stories" focused on people
who could not otherwise program, but the cost was imposing too much
abstraction on the brighter users.

So I think it's a hard problem, and thus a very worthy one to pursue.

[0] <http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng>

------
j45
This is weird. Techcrunch in my eyes contributed to the startup hype machine
that it's now complaining about?

Celebrating funding like winning the Startup Lottery is only going to feed the
monster of hype vs real innovation.

Is it just me?

------
jballanc
If you allow me a small anecdote... I used to live in Manhattan. Occasionally,
I would go to the store to get paper towels or toiletpaper and buy the bulk-
size. Invariably, the package would be too big to fit in the small plastic
bags that were available and carrying it along with everything else was rather
awkward. Last year I moved to Turkey, and one of the first things that I
noticed is that all of the bulk-size packages of paper towels and toiletpaper
have built in carrying straps.

Now, this may seem like a very, very minor thing (and it's not unique to
Turkey). On it's own it says nothing, but the longer I've been away from the
US, the more and more I've noticed just these sorts of little things. It's the
sum total of these "little things" that indicate to me that the US has, on a
very fundamental level, _stopped innovating_.

Oh, sure, the US will continue to produce new things. It'll probably even
produce one or two _big_ new things in the next couple years, but it's not the
big things that drive the innovative spirit. Gather enough smart people in one
place, give them enough time and enough money, and you're pretty much
guaranteed to get a major innovation (or, at least a driverless car).

You'll also waste an enormous amount of resources. A society that is
innovative at its core has only to foster that innovation, in any small way,
to get a far greater return on investment. In short: America has a tremendous
head start, but America has become complacent. The "next big thing" just might
come from somewhere where the people are still hungry.

~~~
cbs
I think you're drawing too much from that observation. It says more about the
market in the Turkey than the innovation in Turkey.

Geographically-targeted versions of items are custom tailored for desires of
local markets. Even if we assumed none of the TP brands in Turkey are
multinational corporations, do you really think that the carrying strap idea
wouldn't have been nicked by companies that do sell to other markets?

Living in NYC and buying a big pack of toilet paper is an outlier as far as
the US is concerned. Anywhere else in the states you would put the pack it in
your shopping cart and roll it directly to your car door.

For all we know, those straps could have been designed in the States, and the
bean-counters decided adding the straps to the case manufacturing process is
only cost-justified in plants serving an average population density of X and
above.

I only bring this up because I have, in the past, been working in the States
and built better versions of products for sale exclusively in Europe.

~~~
jballanc
Perhaps the straps were a bad example. Another example (that I already noticed
back in 2004) is that the mall parking lots all have lights hooked up to
sensors so that you can see when a spot is available without having to drive
up-and-down every aisle in the lot.

Again, it's not that any one particular example stands out. For almost every
one of these examples I've noticed, I could come up with a way to explain away
how it isn't a difference in innovation. I, too, have thought about the how
shopping-carts-to-cars does not necessitate the straps. I have thought that
the parking lot lights might not have a significant or measurable enough ROI
to justify their installation to US mall owners... but isn't that the point?

It's not that any of these things are needed or demanded or even entirely
justifiable from a purely economics-driven view point. But since when has an
economics-driven view point led to great innovation? Isn't a prerequisite for
innovation the willingness to look beyond simple, straight-forward economic
arguments? To be creative for creativities sake?

It's in this way that I mean the US has stopped innovating.

~~~
eclipxe
We have the parking light indicator thing here too. San Jose, Santana Row...

~~~
jballanc
Heh...oddly enough, I've been to Santana Row. It's the only mall in the entire
US that I've been to that has anything even close, and while Santana Row does
tell you what levels have free spots, the last time I was there they still
didn't have indicator lights above each individual spot.

...but, again, it's not any one particular "invention" but rather the whole
attitude that's different. The US has gotten complacent and seems to be
spending more effort on justifying why it's the greatest than on actually, you
know, _being_ the greatest.

~~~
eclipxe
They have the indicator lights now also ;-)

But, I understand your point!

------
hexagonc
Spoken like a brat spoiled by an embarrassment of riches. Even if one grants
that not much innovative has happened since the iphone was released in 2007,
and other comments have already falsified this claim, 2007 really isn't _that_
long ago. We're talking about an event that completely changed the way people
interact with mobile devices and consume content. A seismic shift that
resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony) of empires. How often
do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen before 2007?

As anyone here can attest, innovation is hard -- _really_ hard. I'm a nobody
and I see this firsthand in my daily life. I've been working on a side-project
for years that I hope will change the world and planned on building a proof of
concept prototype last weekend. I expected to be done with the prototype in 2
days. It took over a week. A quarter of the way through construction, the code
for the prototype just kept getting more and more complicated and kludegy,
even though I thought I had designed it well enough to be straightforward.
Although, I eventually had to redesign the whole thing, the final design ended
up being much better and more reusable than the original POC I had planned. I
was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could spend time to rethink
the design. There were plenty of stories in 2012 to blog about where products
were released half-baked because they were released too early.

I suspect we will see many interesting things in 2013, much of which has been
incubated and polished during the time that Michael thought nothing was
happening.

~~~
kylebrown
> _A seismic shift that resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony)
> of empires. How often do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen
> before 2007?_

Looking back, I was more surprised by the rise of Google (and Android/Linux)
in a world dominated by Microsoft. But at 28, I'm probably just a little older
than you.

I'd also argue that the reason the last milestone was in 2007 isn't because of
the iPhone, but because that's just before the global financial superbubble
popped (foreshadowed by the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble in 02). IMO, that
was the earthquake which stymied true attempts innovation. Many people stopped
trying to innovate and starting worrying about finding a safe place for their
retirement fund (still are), or worse, finding a job.

Shoot me an email u feel like sharing your POC project with a fellow dreamer.

~~~
zanny
> I was more surprised by the rise of Google (and Android/Linux) in a world
> dominated by Microsoft.

Microsoft dominated the mobile phone space? Ubuntu is doing ok, but I don't
think it is taking the productivity market by storm. I am more impressed Apple
kept their propaganda campaign for OSX going so strong that it became its own
self perpetuating must-have device trend for no other reason than shiny and
street cred for 99% of buyers. I'm 21. When I was still in middle school RIM
was in its prime.

> IMO, that was the earthquake which stymied true attempts innovation.

Tech investment has barely slowed down since then. A lot of us are still out
of work because society hasn't adapted to the still continuing trend of
"productivity is high enough not everyone needs to work 40 hours a week to
prosper" but the tech sector is still there. The _real_ reason for the
innovation slowdown is extreme patent trolling and abuse in the US. The IP
laws here, especially software patents, are ruining potentially revolutionary
tech with this systemic abuse.

------
enraged_camel
Peter Thiel actually talked about this in one of his CS 183 lectures at
Stanford. He categorized progress as vertical vs. horizontal. Vertical
progress can be defined as a problem of going from 0 to 1: you manage to do
something totally new. Whereas horizontal progress is a problem of going from
1 to n, as in replicating an idea that has already been proven to be
successful.

Thiel said that most of our vertical progress comes from Silicon Valley, which
I agree with. But I think SV also has a lot of horizontal progress, which is
what Arrington is complaining about. Everyone and their mother is working on a
social app, and every software company is going apeshit about mobile. Granted,
tech news coverage is probably skewed in favor of horizontal progress, since
vertical ideas by definition are so brand new and "out there" that most people
would dismiss them as crazy. Still though, it would be great if someone came
up with the next technology as innovative and groundbreaking as the iPhone or,
to a slightly lesser extent, the iPad.

------
edw519
Find some customers whose hair is on fire.

You'll never be bored again.

------
lubujackson
There is so much amazing creation happening right now. Unfortunately for
TechCrunch, it doesn't have, nor aspire to, $5 million seed funding, so TC
won't hear about it.

------
swanlegs
Oh, tech bloggers. Never happy. I think we should all try spending more time
away from our devices. There is so much more to life than those glowing
rectangles.

------
miami-dade
As a founder, it's often better to start where your own pain points are,
because sometimes you'll stumble upon an incredibly massive pain felt by the
entire world. Now you're ready to do business.

Be advised, however, because even if you manage to identify one such sharp
pain point, and even if you have a solution, only rarely will you successfully
be able to repackage it and market it to the masses. But to put in
perspective, if you're working towards an affordable solution 99% of the world
is _compelled_ by extreme pain to use, you might very well be working on a
billion dollar business.

The question is, when are more startups going to realize that the biggest pain
in the room is as clear as day? It's right in front of every single one of us.
It's only a matter of time before people in massive numbers realize that 24/7
surveillance of all telecommuncations isn't fucking cool. People are already
flocking to VPNs to get around downloading restrictions, so what happens when
people realize they need a VPN to send a private email? Here the truth is
contagious, and government elements can only repeat lies successfully for so
long. The problem of the surveillance state is the very definition of sharp
pain:

Compared to the markets for cosmetic surgery, real estate, knee pain, back
pain, ANY market you can think of - the prospect of having all of your
telecommunications stored indefinitely if not monitored in real time by
regimes teetering on the edge is an order of magnitude more concerning. When
you consider that a 24/7 surveillance state by definition constitutes
neverending pain, it's really no contest.

Unwanted, unconstitutional surveillance measures are creating a seering hot,
absolutely intolerable pain for the entire human population. This is a pain
that demands a solution, ASAP.

As a startup and as a developer, there are very few pursuits more worthy of
your time than furthering human rights and averting absolute tyranny.

Curiously, thanks in large part to Bitcoin, the startup community now has the
power to fund itself anonymously and innovate solutions that actually matter,
without outside interference.

The clock is ticking.

~~~
b1daly
What are these pain points related to the rise in surveillance you mention.
This seems to be an article of faith on HN: that lack of privacy protections,
increasing amounts of personal data being aggregated, and intensifying
surveillance is creating a perfect storm of bad consequence for civilians at
large.

But I never hear about what the harm is except for the exceptional cases.
Anecdotally, none of my aquaintances has had a single adverse life event that
can be attributed to these trends.

On the other hand, adverse events related to money/jobs, health issues, issues
with intimacy and social isolation, being too busy: these are daily
occurrences.

I'm bringing this up here just because your post reminded me I wanted to run
this question by the HN community.

------
Too
> _I don’t want to read any more stories about how Facebook cloned something
> they couldn’t buy. Or that Twitter banned something that they tried to buy
> but Facebook got there first. Or the press regurgitating how Google+ is
> somehow not flailing. Or about the number of Android v. iPhone devices. Or
> Samsung’s patent mishaps. Or how Yahoo is winding down things in Asia._

The funny thing is that techcrunch is one of the most guilty sites when it
comes to writing about these things.

------
jjb123
What gets made is what people want.

We didn't get flying cars at $250,000/car. We got 140 characters for free
because that's what people wanted. We didn't get hoverboards, not for lack of
technology, but it just turned out that we wanted to search the world's
knowledge with Google.

We're frogs in boiling water, not knowing just how innovative we're becoming
as a people. And sci-fi writers are just bad (or as bad as typical
entrepreneurs) at guessing what people want.

~~~
icebraining
Well, good sci-fi writers don't try. As Ursula Le Guin puts it,

    
    
      Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually
      charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets), and by
      futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and
      futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.
    

<https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894>

------
zmmmmm
Overlooks tablets, siri, google now, google glass ...

Seems like a case of self-imposed blindness. Narrow down your field of vision
until you don't see anything exception startups oriented around mobile, iOS,
social media and then complain that you're not seeing anything revolutionary.
Tablets are arguably the biggest change in personal computing since the
internet reached consumers. To complain things are boring is bizarre.

------
sixQuarks
I don't think most people realize how big Google Glass is going to be, but
that's in 2014. I predict it will be a bigger leap than the iPhone in 2007.

------
ironchief
The bursting of a bubble is the BEST time for a blogger and entrepreneur. The
red ocean calms, old truisms die, resources reform and a new paradigm is born.
We've all perfected execution, optimized our UX, achieved our viral
coefficient, developed on every platform, increased DAU and sold to Facebook.
100 Million users is the new 10 Million but in the next shift does that even
matter? To be on this cusp is to define it as much as Microsoft/Netscape did
in the 90s, Google/Apple did in the early 00s, Facebook/Twitter now.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause
and reflect." - Mark Twain

So what's next? Disregard the mean and look for the outliers on both sides.
Those are the true survivors, the extremophiles. When the mean shifts, they
will have already adapted to the new environment, have succeeded, failed,
persevered and flourished. So go there, fight and thrive because the future
favors its creators, the extremophiles.

------
dhugiaskmak
You aren't _bored_ , you're _boring_.

------
snitzr
This article is 100% trolling. Don't feed.

------
Elizer0x0309
How about the author be grateful for advances and if still bored, be proactive
and join the rest of us, staying up late nights trying to add to the knowledge
base of our species.

Easy to point the finger outside, hard to point it inside.

------
ojr
Why do people undervalue the value brought by by these big companies, it would
nice to have flying cars that most of the population would not be able to
afford, or more trips to space that the wealthy can enjoy habitually, but the
reality is these tech companies have reach their audience globally, call me
crazy but I think that itself is amazing, we can always do better though

------
paul9290
3D Printing, which I'm guessing will lead to printing up your own clothes.

Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy
objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting. Our economies are struggling
already. As tech continues to evolve alongside population increases, I have a
minor worry about how the majority will sustain themselves?

~~~
ht_th
> Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy
> objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting.

Some observations:

1\. You would start buying designs instead of products. You can go shopping
for them, just on a meta-level kind of way.

2\. You are able to change designs, get designs changed by others (you can get
at a shop, maybe), you can share designs with others (social network of
things?), you can communicate about these designs, and so on. Stuff can be
personalized on a micro and macro scale, whereas now it can only be
personalized on a macro scale through combining existing items. With
3D-printing you can personalize the items, too.

3\. There will be a growing market for hand made stuff, albeit more exclusive.
I think the first couple of decades the distinction between printed clothing
and clothing made from fabrics will be clear. That means that traditional
clothing will keep its value while printed clothing will be valued less.

If anything, shopping will become a more immersive activity, I think. It'll
change from a materialistic activity to a more service-oriented activity.

------
Apocryphon
Just a year ago, TechCrunch was also being short-sightedly wrong about
established major companies being "boring":
[http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-
sa...](http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sap-is-not-
and-the-world-has-gone-mad/)

------
hkj
It seems he is about to realize that things move in waves. Currently people
are learning how to take advantage of all this new mobile technology and once
they have done that we will get our new wave of awesome shit.

------
aristidesfl
Look around you

------
hristov
Ok i smell spam upvoting. There is no way 50 people thought this navel gazing
article deserved an upvote. He does not even say anything.

Pg, time to tweak the algorithms again.

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yankoff
Of course you'll get bored if your primary source of tech news delivers you
only pinterests and instagrams.

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chetan51
Actually, the last great human invention will probably be self-reflective
Artificial Intelligence.

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mburshteyn
Ctrl+F Tesla, SpaceX, zero results. Really? I'm excited about these companies.

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g2e
Ha! Easier said than done! Of course, everybody wants something new.

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mr_luc
Mike,

Build something yourself.

Sincerely,

The people who are not bored.

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jorisw
TC;DR.

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michaelochurch
The people in charge have no vision. Everyone makes this complaint, because
it's almost always true. The difference is that it's starting to matter. You
can't "do technology" without vision. Not anymore.

If you're running a toothpaste factory, you don't need vision. You just need
competent execution. You need people to show up and follow the plan without
complaint. This kind of work can actually be managed. If you can cut costs
without compromising on quality, you do it. It's not about vision. That's
already solved. Vision was relevant long ago when someone figured out how to
make toothpaste. Your job is just to keep abreast of competitors and seek
rent.

VC-istan is a postmodern startup factory. It's technically not a company, but
as a tight social network, it functions as one. VCs, rather than properly
competing, talk to each other and agree on who they like and who they don't.
VC-istan's "serial entrepreneurs" are just glorified PMs whose egos make them
unemployable. The real bosses are the VCs. They want quick exits, as they
should, because that's how the incentive systems that govern them are set up.
The "tech press" are a sort of HR organization. Entrepreneurs are PMs, often
mediocre ones, and engineers are chumps paid in lottery tickets. This is just
a big company that has managed to dress itself up as a thousand small ones
that happen to be all controlled by the same people.

Now you have an ecosystem of commodity entrepreneurs hiring commodity
engineers to implement commodity ideas. Ok, nothing to see here. Mobiles
skwrking, mobiles chirping, take the money and run, take the money and run,
take the money...

Is it any wonder that this isn't producing innovation? It shouldn't be. Yet
VC-istan is doing a lot better than most large companies do. It seems
inevitable in large organizations (including economies) that the resources
gravitate toward players who don't have much in the way of vision. Innovation
is the _exception_. It adds variance. Given that we're social animals who
judge one another based on reliability (low variance/minimal performance)
rather than capability (expected return) it is socially _dangerous_.

How many people have the talent and the resources? I'm sitting on +4 sigma
talent but have no money. The people with boatloads of money seem (with a few
exceptions) to be lacking in vision (which means I can't tell if they have
talent, but I have doubts). I can't say that I blame them. Why take risks if
you have no need to do so?

What we have now is a generation that's used to technical progress and wants
to take part. We have people who have been working their asses off since age
4, are now in their 20s and 30s, and want to take part in technical
innovation. Most of them can't, because there's so little of it actually going
on, and because most work activity is bullshit oriented toward keeping one
warlord boss's status high at the expense of another's, rather than being
invested in true progress. That's depressing. It creates a malaise. A deep
sense of ennui. Yawn, another fart app. We now have an unprecedented number of
ridiculously talented, over-educated people saying, "Dude, where's my machine
learning job?"

I think that 2013 will see the beginning of a Flight to Substance, and if I'm
right, that will put that talent to better use than fart apps and toilet
check-in services. I don't know how it will play out. I have no clue who will
fund it. One sign of this is the increasing clamor for Valve-style open
allocation. By the mid-2010s, you won't be considered a real tech company if
you're running closed allocation (take heed, Google). If I'm right, that will
help. That will help our generation work its way toward excellence. At least,
some of us will go in that direction. Others will go off into the weeds of
fart apps. May the market reward both crowds justly.

Here's how we fix tech.

* Open allocation. As long as the work is relevant to the company's needs, let people work on whatever they want. This enables _native_ growth of technical talent. You don't have to poach qualified people with ridiculous signing bonuses. They quickly find a project that fits their skills and interests, and they actually improve while they work for you. Imagine that.

* Stop fetishizing either extreme of company size. Not all large companies are bad, not all startups are good. Nor vice versa. If your 50-person startup is running closed allocation with typical HR policies, then it's just a big company that failed to get big and it should be considered a massive joke. I've heard of people getting turned down for transfers in 20-person companies because of "headcount" limitations. If you want to work at a startup, then drop that shit and work for a real fucking startup.

* Demand work on hard problems. Don't build someone's fart app for 5% equity. If you're in the press, don't reward stupidity either. Instead of cheering on idiots who get acquired for outrageous sums, ridicule them.

~~~
SatvikBeri
How we judge talent is actually one of the biggest problems, and a bias that
I've been trying very hard to solve.

Intellectually, I know there's a huge difference between a programmer who has
99th percentile programming skills and one who has 90th percentile programming
skills. Being a non-programmer, I don't have the tools to easily tell the
difference.

This means my base instincts will tell me to work with the person who is a
good programmer and speaks confidently and clearly, vs. the exceptional
programmer who's shy and mumbles. That's because as far as my brain can tell,
they both have the same degree of programming ability.

I work very hard to solve this bias. I make sure to focus on people's
strengths and ignore weaknesses that aren't obvious dealbreakers. I try to
maintain wide social circles and ask my most successful friends what standards
I can use to judge skill in different areas. I pay a lot of attention to how
other people in their industry judge them, vs. people in general.

What I've found is that there are two kinds of people who are really diamonds
in the rough. One is people who are generally smart and have shown the ability
to excel in a lot of fields, but haven't had a lot of experience in the field
you're talking about. Think about a recent graduate who has an exceptional
understanding of History and Psychology and is an excellent tennis player.
This kind of person will usually learn very quickly and excel at jobs that
demand a high ratio of problem-solving ability to knowledge.

Another kind of diamond-in-the-rough is someone who is admired by people in
their field but somewhat disparaged by others. A good example would be a
Salesman who always exceeds his quota but struggles with basic math. People
who find math easy will typically think of this fellow as stupid, even if he's
a genius at what he does.

Pay attention to people like these. It's all too easy to make a mistake like
"If someone can't do math/can't speak coherently/failed high school/doesn't
understand technology/uses Internet Explorer, then they must be stupid." In my
experience this is almost _never_ true-having a weakness doesn't mean that
someone doesn't have a certain strength. Focus on the strengths and you'll end
up working with (and hanging around) much more interesting, much more
diversified people.

~~~
Eliezer
> How we judge talent is actually one of the biggest problems, and a bias that
> I've been trying very hard to solve.

Is this a major business problem for you? Are you trying to solve it using
actual money and process or just winging it really hard every time? There are
known programmers who are _really_ good (USA Computing Olympiad) and some of
them will be articulate and you could find someone who's a good fit and hire
them as a consultant to help tell the difference... though that's only off the
top of my head.

Every time I hear somebody describe a "big problem" they've been "trying very
hard to solve" I wonder whether they've focused on it enough to (a) step back
and think about possible tools to make the job easier (b) resort to
professional specialization (c) make it the job responsibility of a particular
person or (d) spend actual money.

~~~
timr
_"There are known programmers who are really good (USA Computing Olympiad)"_

So, maybe this will come as a shock, but "computing olympiad" success doesn't
correlate with success as a professional programmer. There's _so much more_
than raw intellectual horsepower to being a good team engineer that it can't
be captured with any one test.

Which is to say, the parent is right. Identifying good programmers is a hard
problem. Harder than identifying people who do well at coding contests.

~~~
Eliezer
Yes, but I'd expect them to at least be able to tell _good programmers from
bad programmers_ better than someone who couldn't code.

------
wildranter
This guy is only making noise asking us to let go anything cool we've been
working for years to improve his 2013's headlines. Don't fall for it.

One thing hthe OP surely got is the title of the worst article of 2012. The
year is almost over, and he aside the bar so high that now is almost
impossible to take this for him.

Now back to the point. Innovation is not some new shiny thing that no one has
seen before. Instead, real innovation is something you work on until itself is
the definition of perfection according to someone's vision. Thus iteration is
the mother of innovation.

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lucian303
Lots of people are bored. This is the kind of garbage that should stay off HN.
A contentless POST. I believe that's a HEAD.

