I don't know if his hour-long talk at BoS2010 will get posted eventually, but a major theme was that value was shifting from creating "technology" to creating communities around a shared experience. StackOverflow is more sophisticated than the clone-it-in-a-weekend crowd gives it credit for, but even if it were Baby's First CRUD App, it would be Baby's First CRUD App Which Contributes Hundreds Of Millions In Productivity To Developers. That community and their accumulated knowledge have value even if the technology is a hacked-together Wordpress plugin (and again, it isn't).
It is an open question whether they successfully move beyond developers. If they do, gadzooks, good news for the world. There are similar expert questions with canonical right answers which are a) difficult to find at present and b) extraordinarily consequential for people.
I had two canonical examples in recent weeks on tax and visa questions, for myself and other people. Answering one took a week of research and directly lead to $5,000 in my pocket. It is ungoogleable at present. The one asked by a friend of mine is similarly ungoogleable, the right answer is easy but nonobvious and virtually undocumented, and many of the numerous wrong answers lead to deportation.
It is an open question whether they successfully move beyond developers. If they do, gadzooks, good news for the world. There are similar expert questions with canonical right answers which are a) difficult to find at present and b) extraordinarily consequential for people.
I had two canonical examples in recent weeks on tax and visa questions, for myself and other people. Answering one took a week of research and directly lead to $5,000 in my pocket. It is ungoogleable at present. The one asked by a friend of mine is similarly ungoogleable, the right answer is easy but nonobvious and virtually undocumented, and many of the numerous wrong answers lead to deportation.