

Ask YC: what is your most important idea? - andreyf

Two hundred years from now, what piece of work would you like to be remembered for most?<p>If you had one year to devote to working on one project, after which you could never code again, what would you make?
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neilk
Lao-Tzu would argue that being of lasting significance, is, well,
insignificant:

    
    
       Of the best leaders
       When the task is accomplished
       The people will remark
       We have done it ourselves.
    

The people who made TCP/IP and HTTP are among the greatest benefactors to
humankind in the past 20 years. Yet hardly anyone knows who they are, and I
doubt they will make the history books. Because they were so successful, their
achievement now seems like an impersonal product of the age. If only!

All the internet entrepreneurs, all the ones who became richer than Croesus -
their achievement was to become gatekeepers for a zillionth of the wealth that
the Internet and the Web have bestowed on the world. And then they became
targets for other people, who had piled up maybe a zillionth and a half of
that wealth, and people like Arrington can't shut up about them.

If you want to change the world, and the people know your name, you're doing
it wrong.

~~~
VarunGupta
I think, to be remembered for long time it's not about the field or occupation
with which a personality is associated but it depends on the quantum of
fundamental shift that he/she brings in the evolution of civilizations. eg:
Newton and Einstein will be remembered for the centuries to come though other
brilliant physicists will not. Humanity will respect Wright brothers for many
ages to come, though the case may not be same for the person who invented jet
engine.

May be their original work is not in much use these days but they opened a new
domains for future generations to work on and that created the shift.

~~~
altay
Or -- just playing devil's advocate here -- perhaps it's a matter of PR...
e.g., Edison vs. Tesla.

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qhoxie
An open collaborative platform for education. Something along the lines of
OpenCourseWare. I feel like that should be the future if it isn't already in
sight. I'm of the school of thought that puts educating people as a top
concern, and the more readily available and collaborative it is, the better it
can be for everyone.

~~~
aditya
Selling things to .edu institutions is a royal pain in the neck. Couldn't tell
if this is non-profit pie-in-the-sky idea or for-profit venture, but if it is
the latter, best of luck :)

~~~
trekker7
maybe there are applications for enhanced training within companies, or even
to sell on the cheap to college students themselves that want a better group-
study environment for when they can't meet up. you don't have to sell bulk
licenses.

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vaksel
200 years from now noone will remember anything you'll ever accomplish. Look
back to 1808, do you honestly remember any major inventions from back then?

I don't remember the exact quote, but it goes something along the lines of "If
you want to be remembered 100 years from now, you need to kill a lot of
people"

~~~
aasarava
Really? I don't know about 1808 exactly, but history is full of accomplished
individuals whose names we remember many years later. Galileo? Gutenberg?
Edison? Ben Franklin? Marie Curie?

~~~
azharcs
But Hitler, Genghis Khan are always more famous than Edison or Galileo. Just
like how G.W.Bush or Dick Cheney will be more famous than Sir.Tim Berners Lee
for the future generation.

~~~
unalone
Yeah, but Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will be more famous than Bush or Cheney.

~~~
vaksel
How many people remember Rockefeller and Carnegie off the top of their head?
Actually bad example, it hasn't been 200 years since those guys.

How about Vanderbilt and Astor? I doubt you'll find many people who know who
they are.

Wealth alone doesn't get you into history books, you may fund some expedition,
but it'll be Louis & Clarke who'll get into the history books.

~~~
unalone
Not wealth, but ideas. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are not just icons of wealth,
but icons of revolution, in a way.

I don't think Warren Buffet will be remembered, which I find sad. But I
believe Jobs will live on as a sort of legend of his own.

~~~
brent
Weren't Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt "icons of revolution"? I mean,
oil, steel, and shipping are more important than ipods, right?

~~~
unalone
Not to the masses they weren't. But let's see who remembers Henry Ford
nowadays. He's the icon of that era.

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unalone
The same idea I'm working on this year. Something that makes it easy to do a
task that's simple offline, hard online. (I'd say more but I'm a paranoid
youth.)

Really, anything that does the generic idea presented above. Whenever you
present a simple method of doing something, the whole system tips.

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dangoldin
Showing that P=NP.

~~~
kylec
Just show that N=1 or P=0. Problem solved. Next?

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kylec
It was a joke. Apparently people here have no sense of humor.

~~~
dangoldin
I got the joke, not sure why you got voted down.

In any case, I've already gotten the trivial solutions =)

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LKM
My email sig:

"If there's one thing I am truly proud of, it's that I've wasted all my
talents, contributed nothing to the human race, and will not be remembered by
generations yet to come."

If you're doing things because you want to be remembered for them, you're
doing things for all the wrong reasons and will never be remembered for
anything.

------
jgrahamc
I would take one year with my daughter and travel with her around the world.

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mleonhard
Making sending money as easy as sending email.

~~~
walesmd
Paypal?

~~~
thebigshane
Paypal is easy. But it is not as easy and ubiquitous as sending an email.

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biohacker42
Linear time protein folding.

