meta ruminations on the next big thing

[Tom]

On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, Adam L. Beberg wrote:

--]On Sun, 11 Nov 2001, Tom wrote:
--]
--]> The web was useless? Broadband was useless?
--]
--]Yup, Mom had no use for them. The point of technology is to help PEOPLE,
--]remember that? Back in your idealistic days? Now the focus is almost
--]completely on how technology can help companies layoff more people.


Thats mostly because boneheads went and based biz models on unfounded
buble dreams and did not havea  full grasp on what they were dealing with.
The bubble burst for the very real very obvious reason (go back and check
the posts) that more than a goodly number of foundations were build on
sand.

As for helping people... FIDO..yea it wasnt the mass mega cash machine of
AOL but did and does it help people connect. Damn Fing tooting. 


My idelistic days were about people using computers in general and the net
as an example  for extending thier lifes in ways not available elswise.

Like sharing thoughts and ideas across a globe late on a sunday.


--]Any technology that doesn't help in the long run my mom and grandpa is
--]useless.

I would put forth that your looking at limitations not of the worth but of
the applications there of. I do not think an AOL is a good and great
things in much the same way the old check out person at the supermarket
is. But give me folks the option of a U-Scan and many, not all, will find
it far more usefull. 

Tossing out the market with the average does not make sense.

--]I yearn for the good old days when everyone online had a 3-digit IQ too, but
--]those days are long gone. Now encountering a 3-digit requires a major quest.

Ya know what, there were as many asshole percentage wise back then  as
there are now:)-  Come on lets not get all nostalgic and paint yesteryear
as a heven for ultra polite mensa heads. There were hordes of places where
flamerats, scriptkiddies (ascii bombs anyone) and convowreckingballs were
abound.

Yestery was not the golden age, rather it is the backdrop on which we have
the luxory of hindsight to paint poetic about so that we can show the now
as so much dross and dreck.



--]
--]The only useful thing I can see that came out of the last 5 years was
--]email and real-time email (IM) for the masses, thats all REAL people get
--]online for. Real people have BFs and GFs and bars to goto so only need so
--]much porn. Things like cheaper airfares have far more to do with booting the
--]travel agents then the net.
--
I agree with you . The best of what the "net boom" has done is to extend
email coverage to pretyy much 99% of the people I care to convese with, to
have afforded me the cahnce to find many more who I like to converse with
I would not have otherwise have come to be in contact with, and also has
moade it so we can share not just conversatins but those things which they
are often about (books, music, movies, art, words etc)

--]I'm still looking for a useful next big thing. Maybe there isn't one that
--]doesnt come with an unemployment cost. Most of the ideas I'm working on
--]should unemploy a shitload of people. That's OK, maybe the only big thing
--]left is that people wont have to work. But in that case our social structure
--]is gonna need radical surgery and soon.
--]

Go reread, or read Robert Anton Wilson's Schrodengers Cat Trilogy. He gets
into the social implications of doing away many jobs and how to balance
it into a socioeconimc plus.


Sounds like the muse is needing amusment:)- So get out your ya yas and
shake to a new dance. 

Peace Love and Feed Thine Head.

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