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There's a world of inspiring thoughts in the article. I'm not an engineer at all, but I love the mindset and have learned an incredible amount from YCombinator

There's a world of inspiring thoughts in the article. I'm not an engineer at all, but I love the mindset and have learned an incredible amount from YCombinator, Ray Kurzweil, et al. I'd point to the link on P&G's Connect & Develop strategy as something that has a TON of concrete value for startups/hackers/etc. Finally, I probably get more excited about this kind of thing than hackers who already practice the naive idealism, pragmatism, and humble irreverence that Umair describes for the reason that I outlined in my comment on the original article: the more people that look at problems through a hacking-esque mindset, the better off the world will be. (Also, I didn't really mean the tone of my comment to be directly at "you" per se, just in general...there's a lot of "this lacks substance" blowback about Bubblegeneration...I was just trying to be short (but not curt); sorry!

swombat 18y ago
Ok, fair enough. Sorry for getting prickly, but somehow in a few very short lines you managed to make me feel like you were implying that I'm "one of the TechCrunch masses", I "need to be spoonfed", I "don't know what 'hack' stands for", and, incidentally, that I missed the point of the article. (Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesperson for hackers at large, nor do I intend to suggest I am, and so I'm speaking for myself) I don't think the hacker idealism is naive, or humble for that matter. You could call it naive, but only in the sense that it's willing to question everything. As for humble, there's nothing humble about believing that everyone else might have had it wrong for the last 50 years and that you might know a better way :-) Being a proponent of that approach, I certainly agree that the world could use even more idealism, pragmatism and not-so-humble irreverence, though :-)
- colortone 18y ago
  LOL! I suppose I was naively idealistic about describing naive idealism! Your last sentence really sums it up for me. THE POWER of what Umair is saying is: "I have done the research, and it is razor-sharp, economically-grounded strategy to be idealistic/irreverent/naive/etc."

swombat 18y ago

Ok, fair enough. Sorry for getting prickly, but somehow in a few very short lines you managed to make me feel like you were implying that I'm "one of the TechCrunch masses", I "need to be spoonfed", I "don't know what 'hack' stands for", and, incidentally, that I missed the point of the article. (Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesperson for hackers at large, nor do I intend to suggest I am, and so I'm speaking for myself) I don't think the hacker idealism is naive, or humble for that matter. You could call it naive, but only in the sense that it's willing to question everything. As for humble, there's nothing humble about believing that everyone else might have had it wrong for the last 50 years and that you might know a better way :-) Being a proponent of that approach, I certainly agree that the world could use even more idealism, pragmatism and not-so-humble irreverence, though :-)

colortone 18y ago
LOL! I suppose I was naively idealistic about describing naive idealism! Your last sentence really sums it up for me. THE POWER of what Umair is saying is: "I have done the research, and it is razor-sharp, economically-grounded strategy to be idealistic/irreverent/naive/etc."