This snuck up on me. The essay was much better than I expected, and it is a challenge to high-tech entrepreneurs that may appeal to your idealism and sense of adventure.
Agreed. I think - or at least hope - there might be a hidden desire in Silicon Valley to start solving "Big Problems". To evidence this, I'd point to the admiration of Elon Musk by posters on HN, who - albeit being rich because of Paypal - has devoted most of his time to solving problems like energy and space exploration.
But the point of this article was to not solve "Big Problems" and instead to solve "big problems": to look at uninteresting problems that happen to be big and affect an underclass you are not part of that isn't "exotic" enough to be interesting.
