4 ms·

The ads are a means to an end. More correct: "The best minds of my generation are making huge amounts of money by solving really hard engineering problems and

The ads are a means to an end. More correct: "The best minds of my generation are making huge amounts of money by solving really hard engineering problems and creating whole new industries. That's awesome". It's hard to overstate the economic impact of FB, Google + Apple. These people are building the future of the internet. Ads just pay the bills.

wslh 15y ago
Sorry for my Naivete, but I think that the world priorities must be peace, health and poverty.
- dschobel 15y ago
  Which one of those isn't furthered by the internet? It's not hard to argue the fundamental merit in people working on advancing communication across the globe.
  - wslh 15y ago
    I think that there are shorter ways to accomplish it beyond Internet communication.
    - ThomPete 15y ago
      Then I guess you know what your next project is going to be.
      - wslh 15y ago
        I don't think I have the talent from that. That's why the article is important, a lot of minds are spending time in lower priority items from a humanistic point of view.
        ThomPete 15y ago
        It doesn't take a clever computer scientist to set out for world peace, ending poverty and increasing health. If you really feel so strongly about it why not set up a fund that attempt to fund exactly those 3 areas. Talent has nothing to do with it.
    - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
      There are lots of projects working on peace, health and poverty where someone with your skills could could help or work.
      - mfalcon 15y ago
        Do you mind telling me about some projects in those fields(health specially)?. I'm learning about data mining/machine learning and I'd love to know how this fields are applied to solve important problems and what I can do to help.
        bjelkeman-again 15y ago
        I'll email you.
        bjelkeman-again 15y ago
        don't have specific projects on a list that fits you, but I am sure there are projects out there which needs you help, both projects where you can volunteer or where you can get a job. For a start you could check out our list of health and IT projects in our system, for organisations which work in this area. http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/healthcare/?page=1 http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/healthcare/?page=1 Four years ago I was telling people in a session about water and development aid that they should use modern IT and web tools to do their work more effectively. As a result I ended up talking to Jeroen van der Sommen, now our chairman, and we decided to start Akvo.org to provide those tools. There is a huge need for IT tools in humanitarian aid and development work. You could be working on that if you are interested.
    - qq66 15y ago
      You must be joking. An Egyptian couple recently named their daughter "Facebook" due to the instrumental role that Facebook played in the overthrow of the Egyptian government. Other rebellions have used Twitter extensively. YouTube was instrumental in publicly shaming a racist senator whose loss gave the Democrats the Senate.
bbgm 15y ago
I had asked a related question on Quora some months ago. There is a need in many scientific fields, especially life sciences, for experts in scalable infrastructure, statistical learning, visualization, graph analysis, and good software engineering, but since hard science doesn't pay well enough, the majority of these people are going to the Facebook's of the world. Nothing wrong with that, but we have some challenges in figuring out what "value" means, how we measure it, and perhaps most importantly, how we reward it. There has to be some way of getting some fraction of the really smart computational people into other fields to figure out very hard problems. Unfortunately, the future of the internet is not the only future out there.
scrollbar 15y ago
I don't know, I think you have it the other way around. Content and apps are a means for generating ad revenue- the advertiser is the customer. Lots of technical value gets created in the process, but as companies like Facebook and Google have grown up, they've realized who their real masters are (not the user). See the recent $400m Admeld acquisition rumor to see this in action with Google. OTOH Apple gets paid by the consumer. They're a real product company.

wslh 15y ago

Sorry for my Naivete, but I think that the world priorities must be peace, health and poverty.

dschobel 15y ago
Which one of those isn't furthered by the internet? It's not hard to argue the fundamental merit in people working on advancing communication across the globe.
- wslh 15y ago
  I think that there are shorter ways to accomplish it beyond Internet communication.
  - ThomPete 15y ago
    Then I guess you know what your next project is going to be.
    - wslh 15y ago
      I don't think I have the talent from that. That's why the article is important, a lot of minds are spending time in lower priority items from a humanistic point of view.
      - ThomPete 15y ago
        It doesn't take a clever computer scientist to set out for world peace, ending poverty and increasing health. If you really feel so strongly about it why not set up a fund that attempt to fund exactly those 3 areas. Talent has nothing to do with it.
  - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
    There are lots of projects working on peace, health and poverty where someone with your skills could could help or work.
    - mfalcon 15y ago
      Do you mind telling me about some projects in those fields(health specially)?. I'm learning about data mining/machine learning and I'd love to know how this fields are applied to solve important problems and what I can do to help.
      - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
        I'll email you.
      - bjelkeman-again 15y ago
        don't have specific projects on a list that fits you, but I am sure there are projects out there which needs you help, both projects where you can volunteer or where you can get a job. For a start you could check out our list of health and IT projects in our system, for organisations which work in this area. http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/healthcare/?page=1 http://www.akvo.org/rsr/projects/healthcare/?page=1 Four years ago I was telling people in a session about water and development aid that they should use modern IT and web tools to do their work more effectively. As a result I ended up talking to Jeroen van der Sommen, now our chairman, and we decided to start Akvo.org to provide those tools. There is a huge need for IT tools in humanitarian aid and development work. You could be working on that if you are interested.
  - qq66 15y ago
    You must be joking. An Egyptian couple recently named their daughter "Facebook" due to the instrumental role that Facebook played in the overthrow of the Egyptian government. Other rebellions have used Twitter extensively. YouTube was instrumental in publicly shaming a racist senator whose loss gave the Democrats the Senate.

bbgm 15y ago

I had asked a related question on Quora some months ago. There is a need in many scientific fields, especially life sciences, for experts in scalable infrastructure, statistical learning, visualization, graph analysis, and good software engineering, but since hard science doesn't pay well enough, the majority of these people are going to the Facebook's of the world. Nothing wrong with that, but we have some challenges in figuring out what "value" means, how we measure it, and perhaps most importantly, how we reward it. There has to be some way of getting some fraction of the really smart computational people into other fields to figure out very hard problems. Unfortunately, the future of the internet is not the only future out there.

scrollbar 15y ago

I don't know, I think you have it the other way around. Content and apps are a means for generating ad revenue- the advertiser is the customer. Lots of technical value gets created in the process, but as companies like Facebook and Google have grown up, they've realized who their real masters are (not the user). See the recent $400m Admeld acquisition rumor to see this in action with Google. OTOH Apple gets paid by the consumer. They're a real product company.