What is the point here? What actionable advice are readers supposed to glean from reading this article? It just sounds like you're being different for the sake of it. You're not really encouraging or discouraging, offering any advice or your own personal beliefs of how things should be.
Might be a bit harsh, but nothing bugs me more than a hater or someone with a dissenting opinion that offers little-to-no actionable suggestion or thought-provoking message. I read this and think "Hm, ok".
I agree that there's an issue with grandiosity, but I'm still unsure if it's a net positive or negative for society. Out of the millions working to change the world, maybe one will develop a solution that will truly affect the lives of others for the better. Or perhaps if we lower expectations and live life only to survive, we may be happier with ourselves overall. Who knows. Perhaps the trick is both raising the bar and lowering it and pushing ourselves to be content with falling anywhere in the middle.
> I agree that there's an issue with grandiosity, but I'm still unsure if it's a net positive or negative for society.
I believe that is a net negative for two reasons: (1) grandiosity is a sign of people tying their self-worth to their achievements and (2) grandiosity is a sign of a lack of healthy self-critique.
Tying your self-worth to your success, especially in a high-risk activity, is a recipe for long-term inconsistency and increased personal risk (which in turn impacts net productivity).
Too much optimism and self-confidence is a recipe for stagnation, and that's what we see for the most part in the startup / app-development world.
For instance, perhaps if people were a bit more self-critical, they would discover that historically most technical innovation has occurred in the context of large, well-funded research programs. People might then choose to, rather than starting that social media website that will change the world or hacking together that 'cool' project for Maker Faire, study computer science and take a job at Microsoft Research, PARC or SpaceX.
Or something else.
But any behavior that reduces the extent to which people think about their actions is probably bad.
> Civilization has made us docile, but we’re still the same people underneath, and a change in circumstance could send us back into that primitive state. To quote The Art of Looking Sideways: “Civilization is chaos taking a rest.”
I do grow tired of this idea of "primitive" people being a bunch of savages. One would think with the explosion of knowledge in anthropology we've acquired in the last century that the average person (and especially, the non-average person) would better understand just how wrong Hobbes was with his "nasty, brutish and short" comment.
Civilization as we know it is an attempt to adapt humans to societies at scale, ie. beyond ~200 or so people - and so far, it has worked badly. We're heavily optimized for tribal societies, which isn't surprising given that we developed and improved them over tens of thousands of years, compared to a mere four thousand for civilization.
Let me note that this isn't an indictment against civilization. As with any new thing (say, cars vs. horses, or guns vs. bows) the new development will initially be notably worse than the older one. Guns were around for hundreds of years before they replaced bows, and even then it took hundreds of years more before they made the leap to automatics that has made them so effective today.
Civilization is little different - we've tried all sorts of things, some of which have worked in some ways, many of which have collapsed under their own weight of corruption, inequality or other problems. And things are getting better. But this idea that "non-civilized" people are chaotic or savages really needs to go.
> In fact, if the world is to be saved, it won’t be through human devices.
> Our image of primitive man is that he was a bumbling, grunting idiot.
Since the author is Christian (shown prominently anywhere his name appears), these three sentences make me question what he means by the word 'save.' If he means it in the 'spiritual Christian sense,' then of course no app will do that. And the 'our image' of primitive man seems like the Christian one, influenced by the concept of original sin.
> The world is governed much more by human nature than we’d like to admit, and human nature doesn’t change.
It seems to me that human nature can very much be influenced by technology. Slavery used to be commonplace, with many people (including the strongly religious) having no moral opposition to it. Massive atrocities throughout history have taken place because they were outside the public eye. Hateful words were much easier to speak in the past, before being caught by a recording device was a possibility. The fact that knowledge can now be spread quicker to the rest of the world (something that apps these days can sometimes help with) keeps a lot of this 'human nature' in check.
Just looking at the world today, it's hard to say that technology has not made a significant (and probably net positive) change in how people think and behave.
This is stunningly wrong. Human nature is change, the ability to not only adapt to our circumstances but to effect them is the hallmark of Humanity.
The changing of cultural mores isn't something that just happens, it's something people do. And technology is just the creation of tools to do things. It won't magically make us better, but it does make us stronger when we choose to do good and be good.
He's also mistaken about Communism; it isn't doomed to fail because of some supposed incapability of humans for collective action (counterexamples: every organization ever). It's doomed because it's based on a misapprehension of the scalability of central economic planning.
This was a lesson learned at the cost of many millions of human lives, and it does them a disservice to not learn it.
What a strange rhetorical style. Terse certainty, unimaginative characterization of the human possibility field (via maneuvers to things like "human nature"), short summations of complex historical turns... plus the loud graphic design/quotes. I feel like you've got some points in there but the piece betrayed their communication and a richer exploration.
I do believe a lot of (most?) startup culture applies powerful minds to small problems... which is in support of your headline...
However - why not think of capitalism (and the apps it rides in on) as a medium, or a technology? In this way, it can be used to transform culture. This may not change "human nature," whatever supposed boundaries that has (fwiw, I think it will)... but capitalism&tech applied as such can absolutely save lives, if not the world.
Whatabout an app that uses our network culture to problem solve something like the spread of disease? That counts as "saving the world" in my book.
Of course, "saving the world" usually comes with a shadow of imperialism, but that is another story for another day..
Author: Jordan Koschei
Designer, developer, writer, founder. Follower of Christ. You can follow him on Twitter here.
No, I'm not implying religious belief means that the OP is dumb. I'm saying that Christ-centered theology argues for a fallen world based on immutable characteristics of mankind's nature. Given this, I can see why the OP is inclined to think that no real change will come from "your app" or any other man-made thing.
A common principle in Christianity is that the world is broken beyond repair. Generalised from the principle that everyone is a sinner.
That's why signing up for redemption is such a Big Deal. Either you are on the Christ bus or you're stuffed.
(The exact reasoning varies from church to church, sometimes a lot).
It might or might not be relevant, though. The linked article actually (sorta[1]) suffers from another common problem, which is that the world is a rational machine that can be "fixed" with a few architectural changes. It's very common for intelligent people to think that way.
Complex systems don't work that way. In fact, the best we can do is intelligent trial and error. Treating people as a physics problem or an architecture assignment tends to end in tears.
[1] Another way to look at is that the author has restated the old observation that technological solutions can't solve social problems.
> Runkeeper won’t make an athlete out of someone with no desire to run
And yet today, while driving and using the Navigon North America app on my phone, I got a nice spoken warning saying "CAUTION!" when my speed accidentally exceeded 75 mph when going downhill on a highway.
I would even disagree with the assertion about Runkeeper directly. I never had a history of desiring to run. In fact, I might even say that I hated doing it. However, the nerd in me had an interest in the data I could collect while running. That pushed me out there to actually do it. You maybe still wouldn't call me an athlete, but I am definitely more athletic now than I was before the technology was in my hands.
I go back and forth on this. It's true that your app won't feed people who're starving, at least not directly. But it's kind of incredible how many problems essentially boil down to information problems, and particularly search problems, and your app can certainly solve those. In particular, I think there's a very large supply of untapped goodwill, and a basically infinite demand for goodwill, that is not connecting right now (or connecting poorly, through inefficient charities). For some things, for some people, at some points in time, an app can help bridge that gap. For example, you could write a volunteer version of Exec where people in your community just, I don't know, ask for help and then someone nearby gives them help. Like going grocery shopping or something, or even helping cook dinner, clean the kitchen, etc. Particularly powerful for the elderly - and I think there's plenty of good kids out there who'd be happy to help an elder out for free.
No, it's not "changing the world" in terms of making it a utopia in one fell swoop, but it's adding a bit of the community connectivity, and making real people's dreams of making the world a better place. It's not starving kids with flies on their mouths half a world away, it's people who need help right here.
a) Many types of major improvements in society and life in general aren't happening because they would require change in human nature;
b) Human nature has a tendency to not change, because it's innate to human sapiens and actions like educating "what could be best", moral "brainwashing" etc have only limited effect;
Then you still don't need to conclude that "world will not change" - it suggests an argument that you may need to change homo sapiens to make the world better. There are tech fields that have potential to change that in the near future, such as biochemistry (mind altering drugs); AI research; and genetic engineering [of humans].
These directions do seem disturbing, but that alone won't prevent them from happening. I mean, gulags and genocide are also disturbing but they happen anyway all over the world every decade. So ignoring ways to change homo sapiens won't help, but we have to discuss on how to manage it so that the result is morally/socially good.
How can you explain the fact that we are living in the most peaceful time in the human history? Surely we are not able to change the human mind to control the desires of wanting more and more but we have definitely improved the fundamental definition of what it means to be human. We are not barbarians anymore, we don't enslave other human being for fun and profit anymore. These things matter and matter a lot. We are still in the development stage in-terms of society. We still treat people differently depending upon their skills, knowledge, power and still have notion of national borders and military to protect those borders. I have a feeling that technology will take us to the level of such abundance that future generations will find it hard to believe that we killed each other for resources and honored artificial geological boundaries.
Oh, your app can save the world; it just depends on the app. I was trying to save the world with my pet-project http://theboycottapp.com/ but the execution has been poor.
Thanks, just trying to save the world. I made theboycottapp during the SOPA/PIPA resistance. I ran out of steam and was bummed out that the UPC scanner wouldn't work on the iPod touch that I bought to test the app out on - not a good enough focus to resolve the UPC.
I'm working on other things now with any available time; all of them are free. I keep track of them here: http://www.nanch.com
That wasn't the point. The point is, that if you are crazy enough to do what you enjoy, it doesn't matter. Because you will push the Human Race Forward.
There was about 1.5 million apps and just one world the last time I checked. Not every app needs to save the world. Making it a little better is a noble goal.
> Our image of primitive man is that he was a bumbling, grunting idiot. In truth, he probably wasn’t much different than we are now. Time hasn’t made us smarter, nobler, or more compassionate.
Amen. Actually, if you start thinking you are better, note that a good proportion of the world's villains thought they were somehow better.
The world is unlikely to be saved through technological or governmental machinery. If it is to be saved it will be through the revolutionary actions of neighbors helping neighbors, in opposition to our technology-induced, and urbanization-induced, isolation.
Technology changes the world by changing the environment human nature can work within. The birth control pill, telecommunications, the internal combustion engine, and antibotics has changed the world greatly by changing what is possible.
i was under the impression that app dev and other web consumer related startup stuff was just the infancy stage of learning ways of organizing and bootstrapping ideas.
I don't consider it to be the end of it. I doubt most people here do either. In that sense, i find the article (and many others like it) to be quite short sighted.
Might be a bit harsh, but nothing bugs me more than a hater or someone with a dissenting opinion that offers little-to-no actionable suggestion or thought-provoking message. I read this and think "Hm, ok".
I agree that there's an issue with grandiosity, but I'm still unsure if it's a net positive or negative for society. Out of the millions working to change the world, maybe one will develop a solution that will truly affect the lives of others for the better. Or perhaps if we lower expectations and live life only to survive, we may be happier with ourselves overall. Who knows. Perhaps the trick is both raising the bar and lowering it and pushing ourselves to be content with falling anywhere in the middle.