11 ms·

I’m Bored. What’s Next?

151 points by nhangen 14y ago

nhangen 14y ago
As a software dev currently thinking through my 'next thing,' I find this opinion refreshing. There's a lot of redundant and me-too software and it's far too easy to fall into the trap of building another mobile/social/geo/photo app. I think hardware makers are doing a great job of pushing the envelop, but software not so much. The question is, what's next for software? At the time Twitter came out, it was brand new...amazing...innovative. I can't recall feeling the same about anything since. My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next thing, but the problem there is the barrier to entry is a bit higher, both in terms of knowledge base and financial cost. That said, tech like Bluetooth LE is making it easier than ever to try.
- wallflower 14y ago
  > My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next thing I've started hearing that embedded software control via cheap Android tablets ($50-$100)/hardware interfaces is beginning to take off and reducing the barrier to entry. Pretty much, you can use a $75 Android tablet to control an embedded device and drive the user interface. iPads are, frankly, a bit too expensive for most hardware applications. If I had the energy, I would champion an open-source project for niche hobbyists who want to program a particular type of hardware (assuming their particular hardware has some kind of serial/network relatively-open, documented interface - something like ZigBee but less complicated maybe) but aren't necessarily programmers. Build the project such that the UI and hardware control layer run on Android - and can be abstracted out from the actual hardware later. The UI is not going to be snazzy looking (sliding menu) but reliable looking - like an industrial control but maybe a bit better.
  - rjbond3rd 14y ago
    Interesting. In the local hackerspace, for several years, I watched many students struggle with a (very fine) graphical drag-n-drop programming tool known as StarLogo TNG[0] (and Logo variants). In the end, it seemed the brighter students destined for real programming were relieved to get into a text editor. The "success stories" focused on people who could not otherwise program, but the cost was imposing too much abstraction on the brighter users. So I think it's a hard problem, and thus a very worthy one to pursue. [0] http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng
  - zanny 14y ago
    Most of these cheap tablets have unlocked bootloaders or easily broken into ones. No reason to keep all the unnecessary Android clutter on top of the hardware if you are trying to use it as an imbedded microcontroller. Maybe keep surfaceflinger as the display server, or maybe just run X or Wayland.
aristidesfl 14y ago
Look around you
jeffclark 14y ago
Everyone in the tech world is going bananas over the same stuff. Technology helping technology: things that make Facebook easier/harder to use, things that make software development easier/harder to do, mobile this-that-and-advertising. BOOOOOR-IIIINNNGGG. The companies that are doing actually interesting things are using technology to make non-tech stuff easier/better/faster/brighter: Uber, AirBnB, Zipcar, that female-led startup connecting farmers with buyers, etc. Technology for technology's sake is done and boring and short-sighted. We've got news aggregators that aggregate other news aggregators. Mobile ad platforms that resell ads from other mobile ad platforms. Photo-sharing apps whose entire purpose is to create filters for other photo-sharing sites. And it's all ad-supported. Arrington's right: it's all just the same thing over and over, and it's boring. And I never thought I'd agree with Arrington about anything.
- ebiester 14y ago
  That startup is Vegetality. And why would it matter if it was started by a woman in this context? (I can't wait until ~50% of startups are by women and it's not considered exceptional.)
  - omni 14y ago
    Simple context would suggest that he was offering any details he remembered of the startup in the hope that someone would recognize it. Let's not overreact.
  - Dave9k 14y ago
    Well it would be considered exceptional as women rarely ever lead in number of start-ups in any field.
- diminish 14y ago
  when singularity suddenly comes, all articles will be obsolete before being written; as soon as arrington starts to type their first letter. so there won't be any time to be bored. so enjoy getting bored, because after singularity you will only be perplexed and petrified. (unless you are upgraded or modified)
dholowiski 14y ago
Mike Arrington is bored with blogging. Does that mean he'll stop? Personally I think we're on the edge of a revolution, with the rapid shrinking (and increase in power) of computers, and Google boldly pushing into some pretty deep AI. Intelligent personal assistants. Self driving cars. Wearable augmented reality. There's going to be a lot of exciting stuff to write about in 2013.
- fatalerrorx3 14y ago
  2013 is also going to be a big year for Healthcare IT, the HHS is moving to open up clinical patient data via HHS. I doubt Google will venture again into the healthcare space, given the recent failure of Google Health, but it's going to be a turning point, they should have waited until the end of 2013 to close it down!
  - zanny 14y ago
    > the HHS is moving to open up clinical patient data Don't want to sound too cynical here, but give me a break. The health care industry has resisted technology for 2 decades persistently, and any radical revolution in medicine will have so many public hurdles beyond what has already been dealt I don't see anything changing for Average Joes for decades just because of inertia, the powers that be, and special interests. I mean I still can't get medical care at all without cleaning out my bank account because I'm uninsured. It is personal bias, but I'd rather see that fixed first. $500 - $1000 a month in healthcare is obscene.
- randomdata 14y ago
  The Spirit autonomous tractor[1] becomes available to farmers this spring. I guess driverless vehicles are not exactly radical by now, but the fact that you can actually put your money down on one today is still pretty amazing to my eye. Though I guess it might not be all that interesting through the SV-centric lens. [1] http://www.autonomoustractor.com/ http://www.autonomoustractor.com/
SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
* What's here that wasn't here in 2007? Robots are still rising. Drones too. Voice recognition for everyone with Siri and the equivalent on Android. Natural language queries in Wolfram Alpha. Cheap, reliable 3d motion detection via kinect. 3d printing. Tissue printing and a $99 genetic scan https://www.23andme.com/ https://www.23andme.com/ Cheap SSDs. Self driving cars. Raspberry Pi boards. iPads (I had to check that one - the first iPad launch was just recently in April 2010!) and competing Android and windows tablets. github. * Or these lists: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2 http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-beca... http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012 http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-... * Things that were new and not so well known in 2007, but are big now: The rise of online education via Khan academy, Coursera and Udacity. Workable electric cars. Twitter. Arduino boards. git
- bodegajed 14y ago
  I like what has happened with internet radio. But opposite of boring is exciting. I still couldn't get myself excited with the present though.
  - sillysaurus 14y ago
    One thing that's fun to do when the present loses appeal is to envision the future. Write out in a journal page what a day in your envisioned future is like.
- akkartik 14y ago
  Yeah. http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012 http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-...
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  Out of all those things you listed, self-driving cars and maybe - just maybe - 3D printing are the only truly exciting things, at least in terms of their potential to be disruptive.
edw519 14y ago
Find some customers whose hair is on fire. You'll never be bored again.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
scott_s 14y ago
Try creating instead of commenting on what other create. It's more fun.
- wallflower 14y ago
  Michael Arrington did try and fail to create once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo
  - scott_s 14y ago
    I had the impression that he did not really do creative work on that project, but high level management. I may be wrong.
swanlegs 14y ago
Oh, tech bloggers. Never happy. I think we should all try spending more time away from our devices. There is so much more to life than those glowing rectangles.
swalsh 14y ago
I seem to recall reading a few weeks ago that VC money was starting to move towards B2B companies. If that's true, you're not going to see a lot of exciting tech blog worthy start-ups. You will see a lot of progress in software, and real people will be receiving real value. In fact, i view that as a really positive thing. We don't need another social network enabled live drawing text-pad that opens a door. However my fiance definitely needs some software to reduce some of the redundant unsexy work she has no time to do
wildranter 14y ago
This guy is only making noise asking us to let go anything cool we've been working for years to improve his 2013's headlines. Don't fall for it. One thing hthe OP surely got is the title of the worst article of 2012. The year is almost over, and he aside the bar so high that now is almost impossible to take this for him. Now back to the point. Innovation is not some new shiny thing that no one has seen before. Instead, real innovation is something you work on until itself is the definition of perfection according to someone's vision. Thus iteration is the mother of innovation.
pxlpshr 14y ago
What a meta post. Arrington complaining about a problem his site perpetuated by popularizing consumer tech. [1] Maybe TechCrunch should step away from the desk/SF and put more reporters in other cities on the ground, instead of relying on so much inbound pitching? Technology, used loosely, is becoming an everyday aspect to many businesses so maybe TC also needs to reconsider their editorial position, too. [1] There are tons of other companies in cities around the US (and world) less interested in getting caught up in the SF noise. Spending PR budget to target TC just for some ego exposure amongst select group of peers at the cost of a less targeted audience isn't a wise decision for most. Austin has quiet a few smaller but sustaining tech companies doing pretty interesting things on a regular basis; $AWAY, $BV, $SLAB, Chaotic Moon, Mass Relevance, and numerous other fresh startups like Outbox [2] and DailyDot.com. I'm sure same is true for other cities. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-keep-your-new-years-resolutions-alive/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-keep-y... Don't I have the USA Today and Mashable for this? Did AOL make this decision? [2] Saving the USPS. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-startup-takes-snail-mail-high-tech.html http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-st...
- nhangen 14y ago
  I suppose you're right. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. For years, they wouldn't fund or write about anything that wasn't a me-too product, and now he complains that there's nothing but me-too products. Thanks for finally waking up Michael.
Elizer0x0309 14y ago
How about the author be grateful for advances and if still bored, be proactive and join the rest of us, staying up late nights trying to add to the knowledge base of our species. Easy to point the finger outside, hard to point it inside.
g2e 14y ago
Ha! Easier said than done! Of course, everybody wants something new.
paul9290 14y ago
3D Printing, which I'm guessing will lead to printing up your own clothes. Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting. Our economies are struggling already. As tech continues to evolve alongside population increases, I have a minor worry about how the majority will sustain themselves?
- wr1472 14y ago
  The industrial revolution came and went just fine. I think we masses will be okay this time around too.
- ht_th 14y ago
  > Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting. Some observations: 1. You would start buying designs instead of products. You can go shopping for them, just on a meta-level kind of way. 2. You are able to change designs, get designs changed by others (you can get at a shop, maybe), you can share designs with others (social network of things?), you can communicate about these designs, and so on. Stuff can be personalized on a micro and macro scale, whereas now it can only be personalized on a macro scale through combining existing items. With 3D-printing you can personalize the items, too. 3. There will be a growing market for hand made stuff, albeit more exclusive. I think the first couple of decades the distinction between printed clothing and clothing made from fabrics will be clear. That means that traditional clothing will keep its value while printed clothing will be valued less. If anything, shopping will become a more immersive activity, I think. It'll change from a materialistic activity to a more service-oriented activity.
michaelochurch 14y ago
The people in charge have no vision. Everyone makes this complaint, because it's almost always true. The difference is that it's starting to matter. You can't "do technology" without vision. Not anymore. If you're running a toothpaste factory, you don't need vision. You just need competent execution. You need people to show up and follow the plan without complaint. This kind of work can actually be managed. If you can cut costs without compromising on quality, you do it. It's not about vision. That's already solved. Vision was relevant long ago when someone figured out how to make toothpaste. Your job is just to keep abreast of competitors and seek rent. VC-istan is a postmodern startup factory. It's technically not a company, but as a tight social network, it functions as one. VCs, rather than properly competing, talk to each other and agree on who they like and who they don't. VC-istan's "serial entrepreneurs" are just glorified PMs whose egos make them unemployable. The real bosses are the VCs. They want quick exits, as they should, because that's how the incentive systems that govern them are set up. The "tech press" are a sort of HR organization. Entrepreneurs are PMs, often mediocre ones, and engineers are chumps paid in lottery tickets. This is just a big company that has managed to dress itself up as a thousand small ones that happen to be all controlled by the same people. Now you have an ecosystem of commodity entrepreneurs hiring commodity engineers to implement commodity ideas. Ok, nothing to see here. Mobiles skwrking, mobiles chirping, take the money and run, take the money and run, take the money... Is it any wonder that this isn't producing innovation? It shouldn't be. Yet VC-istan is doing a lot better than most large companies do. It seems inevitable in large organizations (including economies) that the resources gravitate toward players who don't have much in the way of vision. Innovation is the exception. It adds variance. Given that we're social animals who judge one another based on reliability (low variance/minimal performance) rather than capability (expected return) it is socially dangerous. How many people have the talent and the resources? I'm sitting on +4 sigma talent but have no money. The people with boatloads of money seem (with a few exceptions) to be lacking in vision (which means I can't tell if they have talent, but I have doubts). I can't say that I blame them. Why take risks if you have no need to do so? What we have now is a generation that's used to technical progress and wants to take part. We have people who have been working their asses off since age 4, are now in their 20s and 30s, and want to take part in technical innovation. Most of them can't, because there's so little of it actually going on, and because most work activity is bullshit oriented toward keeping one warlord boss's status high at the expense of another's, rather than being invested in true progress. That's depressing. It creates a malaise. A deep sense of ennui. Yawn, another fart app. We now have an unprecedented number of ridiculously talented, over-educated people saying, "Dude, where's my machine learning job?" I think that 2013 will see the beginning of a Flight to Substance, and if I'm right, that will put that talent to better use than fart apps and toilet check-in services. I don't know how it will play out. I have no clue who will fund it. One sign of this is the increasing clamor for Valve-style open allocation. By the mid-2010s, you won't be considered a real tech company if you're running closed allocation (take heed, Google). If I'm right, that will help. That will help our generation work its way toward excellence. At least, some of us will go in that direction. Others will go off into the weeds of fart apps. May the market reward both crowds justly. Here's how we fix tech. * Open allocation. As long as the work is relevant to the company's needs, let people work on whatever they want. This enables native growth of technical talent. You don't have to poach qualified people with ridiculous signing bonuses. They quickly find a project that fits their skills and interests, and they actually improve while they work for you. Imagine that. * Stop fetishizing either extreme of company size. Not all large companies are bad, not all startups are good. Nor vice versa. If your 50-person startup is running closed allocation with typical HR policies, then it's just a big company that failed to get big and it should be considered a massive joke. I've heard of people getting turned down for transfers in 20-person companies because of "headcount" limitations. If you want to work at a startup, then drop that shit and work for a real fucking startup. * Demand work on hard problems. Don't build someone's fart app for 5% equity. If you're in the press, don't reward stupidity either. Instead of cheering on idiots who get acquired for outrageous sums, ridicule them.
Apocryphon 14y ago
Just a year ago, TechCrunch was also being short-sightedly wrong about established major companies being "boring": http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sap-is-not-and-the-world-has-gone-mad/ http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sa...
ojr 14y ago
Why do people undervalue the value brought by by these big companies, it would nice to have flying cars that most of the population would not be able to afford, or more trips to space that the wealthy can enjoy habitually, but the reality is these tech companies have reach their audience globally, call me crazy but I think that itself is amazing, we can always do better though
snitzr 14y ago
This article is 100% trolling. Don't feed.
hristov 14y ago
Ok i smell spam upvoting. There is no way 50 people thought this navel gazing article deserved an upvote. He does not even say anything. Pg, time to tweak the algorithms again.
dhugiaskmak 14y ago
You aren't bored, you're boring.
groby_b 14y ago
Sure, we only got self-driving cars, almost flawless speech recognition, concordant natural language queries, "Minority Report"-like UIs, Google Glass, space flight at 1/10th of the previous cost, 1GB fiber to the home, dramatically cheaper solar power, garage gen tech, 22nm chips, we did a spectacular landing on Mars, working Exoskeletons, the technology to find planets that are only slightly bigger than earth,... And Mr. Arrington is bored? Maybe he's just not paying attention.
- ovi256 14y ago
  Besides speech recognition and natural language queries, all the tech you cited is not yet distributed. And as someone wiser said "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed". So I'd discount the impact of tech demos like Google Glass, at least in the short term. Long term OTOH, I'd like to be as optimistic as possible.
- Jayasimhan 14y ago
  Most of what you mentioned came from big companies with a $billion or more. Mike is an Investor. When he says that innovation is not happening, its probably because he is not seeing good ones starting up, i.e a new comer with an amazing idea. We'll see the effect a few years from now, when most great products come from Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple. It is probably that way already. Every decade has had a game changer who came in from no where. Who is going to take away the 201x?
  - icebraining 14y ago
    Who was the game changer of the 2000s?
    - ritchiea 14y ago
      Google and Apple were probably the two biggest game changers of the 2000s. Apple's being a resurgence and Google being a company founded at the very end of the 90s.
yankoff 14y ago
Of course you'll get bored if your primary source of tech news delivers you only pinterests and instagrams.
lubujackson 14y ago
There is so much amazing creation happening right now. Unfortunately for TechCrunch, it doesn't have, nor aspire to, $5 million seed funding, so TC won't hear about it.
narrator 14y ago
Kenyans now have $50 smart phones that exceed all but the latest phones in capability. We have $50 android tablets. We have reached a sort of technological plateau where stuff we consider awesome advanced technology is more available than clean drinking water. The great stagnation cometh, the center holds, things stick together more strongly than ever.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  All highly commendable projects. There's no exit strategy, though, so VC aren't interested.
enraged_camel 14y ago
Peter Thiel actually talked about this in one of his CS 183 lectures at Stanford. He categorized progress as vertical vs. horizontal. Vertical progress can be defined as a problem of going from 0 to 1: you manage to do something totally new. Whereas horizontal progress is a problem of going from 1 to n, as in replicating an idea that has already been proven to be successful. Thiel said that most of our vertical progress comes from Silicon Valley, which I agree with. But I think SV also has a lot of horizontal progress, which is what Arrington is complaining about. Everyone and their mother is working on a social app, and every software company is going apeshit about mobile. Granted, tech news coverage is probably skewed in favor of horizontal progress, since vertical ideas by definition are so brand new and "out there" that most people would dismiss them as crazy. Still though, it would be great if someone came up with the next technology as innovative and groundbreaking as the iPhone or, to a slightly lesser extent, the iPad.
hexagonc 14y ago
Spoken like a brat spoiled by an embarrassment of riches. Even if one grants that not much innovative has happened since the iphone was released in 2007, and other comments have already falsified this claim, 2007 really isn't that long ago. We're talking about an event that completely changed the way people interact with mobile devices and consume content. A seismic shift that resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony) of empires. How often do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen before 2007? As anyone here can attest, innovation is hard -- really hard. I'm a nobody and I see this firsthand in my daily life. I've been working on a side-project for years that I hope will change the world and planned on building a proof of concept prototype last weekend. I expected to be done with the prototype in 2 days. It took over a week. A quarter of the way through construction, the code for the prototype just kept getting more and more complicated and kludegy, even though I thought I had designed it well enough to be straightforward. Although, I eventually had to redesign the whole thing, the final design ended up being much better and more reusable than the original POC I had planned. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could spend time to rethink the design. There were plenty of stories in 2012 to blog about where products were released half-baked because they were released too early. I suspect we will see many interesting things in 2013, much of which has been incubated and polished during the time that Michael thought nothing was happening.
- kylebrown 14y ago
  > A seismic shift that resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony) of empires. How often do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen before 2007? Looking back, I was more surprised by the rise of Google (and Android/Linux) in a world dominated by Microsoft. But at 28, I'm probably just a little older than you. I'd also argue that the reason the last milestone was in 2007 isn't because of the iPhone, but because that's just before the global financial superbubble popped (foreshadowed by the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble in 02). IMO, that was the earthquake which stymied true attempts innovation. Many people stopped trying to innovate and starting worrying about finding a safe place for their retirement fund (still are), or worse, finding a job. Shoot me an email u feel like sharing your POC project with a fellow dreamer.
mburshteyn 14y ago
Ctrl+F Tesla, SpaceX, zero results. Really? I'm excited about these companies.
j45 14y ago
This is weird. Techcrunch in my eyes contributed to the startup hype machine that it's now complaining about? Celebrating funding like winning the Startup Lottery is only going to feed the monster of hype vs real innovation. Is it just me?
jballanc 14y ago
If you allow me a small anecdote... I used to live in Manhattan. Occasionally, I would go to the store to get paper towels or toiletpaper and buy the bulk-size. Invariably, the package would be too big to fit in the small plastic bags that were available and carrying it along with everything else was rather awkward. Last year I moved to Turkey, and one of the first things that I noticed is that all of the bulk-size packages of paper towels and toiletpaper have built in carrying straps. Now, this may seem like a very, very minor thing (and it's not unique to Turkey). On it's own it says nothing, but the longer I've been away from the US, the more and more I've noticed just these sorts of little things. It's the sum total of these "little things" that indicate to me that the US has, on a very fundamental level, stopped innovating. Oh, sure, the US will continue to produce new things. It'll probably even produce one or two big new things in the next couple years, but it's not the big things that drive the innovative spirit. Gather enough smart people in one place, give them enough time and enough money, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a major innovation (or, at least a driverless car). You'll also waste an enormous amount of resources. A society that is innovative at its core has only to foster that innovation, in any small way, to get a far greater return on investment. In short: America has a tremendous head start, but America has become complacent. The "next big thing" just might come from somewhere where the people are still hungry.
- cbs 14y ago
  I think you're drawing too much from that observation. It says more about the market in the Turkey than the innovation in Turkey. Geographically-targeted versions of items are custom tailored for desires of local markets. Even if we assumed none of the TP brands in Turkey are multinational corporations, do you really think that the carrying strap idea wouldn't have been nicked by companies that do sell to other markets? Living in NYC and buying a big pack of toilet paper is an outlier as far as the US is concerned. Anywhere else in the states you would put the pack it in your shopping cart and roll it directly to your car door. For all we know, those straps could have been designed in the States, and the bean-counters decided adding the straps to the case manufacturing process is only cost-justified in plants serving an average population density of X and above. I only bring this up because I have, in the past, been working in the States and built better versions of products for sale exclusively in Europe.
deleted 14y ago
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ironchief 14y ago
The bursting of a bubble is the BEST time for a blogger and entrepreneur. The red ocean calms, old truisms die, resources reform and a new paradigm is born. We've all perfected execution, optimized our UX, achieved our viral coefficient, developed on every platform, increased DAU and sold to Facebook. 100 Million users is the new 10 Million but in the next shift does that even matter? To be on this cusp is to define it as much as Microsoft/Netscape did in the 90s, Google/Apple did in the early 00s, Facebook/Twitter now. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain So what's next? Disregard the mean and look for the outliers on both sides. Those are the true survivors, the extremophiles. When the mean shifts, they will have already adapted to the new environment, have succeeded, failed, persevered and flourished. So go there, fight and thrive because the future favors its creators, the extremophiles.
jjb123 14y ago
What gets made is what people want. We didn't get flying cars at $250,000/car. We got 140 characters for free because that's what people wanted. We didn't get hoverboards, not for lack of technology, but it just turned out that we wanted to search the world's knowledge with Google. We're frogs in boiling water, not knowing just how innovative we're becoming as a people. And sci-fi writers are just bad (or as bad as typical entrepreneurs) at guessing what people want.
- icebraining 14y ago
  Well, good sci-fi writers don't try. As Ursula Le Guin puts it, Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894 https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894
chetan51 14y ago
Actually, the last great human invention will probably be self-reflective Artificial Intelligence.
zmmmmm 14y ago
Overlooks tablets, siri, google now, google glass ... Seems like a case of self-imposed blindness. Narrow down your field of vision until you don't see anything exception startups oriented around mobile, iOS, social media and then complain that you're not seeing anything revolutionary. Tablets are arguably the biggest change in personal computing since the internet reached consumers. To complain things are boring is bizarre.
miami-dade 14y ago
As a founder, it's often better to start where your own pain points are, because sometimes you'll stumble upon an incredibly massive pain felt by the entire world. Now you're ready to do business. Be advised, however, because even if you manage to identify one such sharp pain point, and even if you have a solution, only rarely will you successfully be able to repackage it and market it to the masses. But to put in perspective, if you're working towards an affordable solution 99% of the world is compelled by extreme pain to use, you might very well be working on a billion dollar business. The question is, when are more startups going to realize that the biggest pain in the room is as clear as day? It's right in front of every single one of us. It's only a matter of time before people in massive numbers realize that 24/7 surveillance of all telecommuncations isn't fucking cool. People are already flocking to VPNs to get around downloading restrictions, so what happens when people realize they need a VPN to send a private email? Here the truth is contagious, and government elements can only repeat lies successfully for so long. The problem of the surveillance state is the very definition of sharp pain: Compared to the markets for cosmetic surgery, real estate, knee pain, back pain, ANY market you can think of - the prospect of having all of your telecommunications stored indefinitely if not monitored in real time by regimes teetering on the edge is an order of magnitude more concerning. When you consider that a 24/7 surveillance state by definition constitutes neverending pain, it's really no contest. Unwanted, unconstitutional surveillance measures are creating a seering hot, absolutely intolerable pain for the entire human population. This is a pain that demands a solution, ASAP. As a startup and as a developer, there are very few pursuits more worthy of your time than furthering human rights and averting absolute tyranny. Curiously, thanks in large part to Bitcoin, the startup community now has the power to fund itself anonymously and innovate solutions that actually matter, without outside interference. The clock is ticking.
- b1daly 14y ago
  What are these pain points related to the rise in surveillance you mention. This seems to be an article of faith on HN: that lack of privacy protections, increasing amounts of personal data being aggregated, and intensifying surveillance is creating a perfect storm of bad consequence for civilians at large. But I never hear about what the harm is except for the exceptional cases. Anecdotally, none of my aquaintances has had a single adverse life event that can be attributed to these trends. On the other hand, adverse events related to money/jobs, health issues, issues with intimacy and social isolation, being too busy: these are daily occurrences. I'm bringing this up here just because your post reminded me I wanted to run this question by the HN community.
lucian303 14y ago
Lots of people are bored. This is the kind of garbage that should stay off HN. A contentless POST. I believe that's a HEAD.
sixQuarks 14y ago
I don't think most people realize how big Google Glass is going to be, but that's in 2014. I predict it will be a bigger leap than the iPhone in 2007.
raphman 14y ago
Nice reply by Ray Cromwell: > I love how Arrington, Thiel, Graham, and others spent years talking about how you don't need any college, promoted quick-buck social media startups with no plan, and kids fresh out of high school, and now they are sad there is no flying cars. [...] https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpcRnu https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpc...
- akiselev 14y ago
  Humans have been talking about flying cars since the 60s. If we would have had them by now, their creators would have been educated well before Thiel Graham and Arrington.
mr_luc 14y ago
Mike, Build something yourself. Sincerely, The people who are not bored.
Too 14y ago
> I don’t want to read any more stories about how Facebook cloned something they couldn’t buy. Or that Twitter banned something that they tried to buy but Facebook got there first. Or the press regurgitating how Google+ is somehow not flailing. Or about the number of Android v. iPhone devices. Or Samsung’s patent mishaps. Or how Yahoo is winding down things in Asia. The funny thing is that techcrunch is one of the most guilty sites when it comes to writing about these things.
hkj 14y ago
It seems he is about to realize that things move in waves. Currently people are learning how to take advantage of all this new mobile technology and once they have done that we will get our new wave of awesome shit.
jorisw 14y ago
TC;DR.

151 points by nhangen 14y ago

As a software dev currently thinking through my 'next thing,' I find this opinion refreshing. There's a lot of redundant and me-too software and it's far too easy to fall into the trap of building another mobile/social/geo/photo app. I think hardware makers are doing a great job of pushing the envelop, but software not so much. The question is, what's next for software? At the time Twitter came out, it was brand new...amazing...innovative. I can't recall feeling the same about anything since. My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next thing, but the problem there is the barrier to entry is a bit higher, both in terms of knowledge base and financial cost. That said, tech like Bluetooth LE is making it easier than ever to try.

wallflower 14y ago
> My own personal belief is that embedded software is going to be the next thing I've started hearing that embedded software control via cheap Android tablets ($50-$100)/hardware interfaces is beginning to take off and reducing the barrier to entry. Pretty much, you can use a $75 Android tablet to control an embedded device and drive the user interface. iPads are, frankly, a bit too expensive for most hardware applications. If I had the energy, I would champion an open-source project for niche hobbyists who want to program a particular type of hardware (assuming their particular hardware has some kind of serial/network relatively-open, documented interface - something like ZigBee but less complicated maybe) but aren't necessarily programmers. Build the project such that the UI and hardware control layer run on Android - and can be abstracted out from the actual hardware later. The UI is not going to be snazzy looking (sliding menu) but reliable looking - like an industrial control but maybe a bit better.
- rjbond3rd 14y ago
  Interesting. In the local hackerspace, for several years, I watched many students struggle with a (very fine) graphical drag-n-drop programming tool known as StarLogo TNG[0] (and Logo variants). In the end, it seemed the brighter students destined for real programming were relieved to get into a text editor. The "success stories" focused on people who could not otherwise program, but the cost was imposing too much abstraction on the brighter users. So I think it's a hard problem, and thus a very worthy one to pursue. [0] http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng http://education.mit.edu/projects/starlogo-tng
- zanny 14y ago
  Most of these cheap tablets have unlocked bootloaders or easily broken into ones. No reason to keep all the unnecessary Android clutter on top of the hardware if you are trying to use it as an imbedded microcontroller. Maybe keep surfaceflinger as the display server, or maybe just run X or Wayland.

aristidesfl 14y ago

Look around you

jeffclark 14y ago

Everyone in the tech world is going bananas over the same stuff. Technology helping technology: things that make Facebook easier/harder to use, things that make software development easier/harder to do, mobile this-that-and-advertising. BOOOOOR-IIIINNNGGG. The companies that are doing actually interesting things are using technology to make non-tech stuff easier/better/faster/brighter: Uber, AirBnB, Zipcar, that female-led startup connecting farmers with buyers, etc. Technology for technology's sake is done and boring and short-sighted. We've got news aggregators that aggregate other news aggregators. Mobile ad platforms that resell ads from other mobile ad platforms. Photo-sharing apps whose entire purpose is to create filters for other photo-sharing sites. And it's all ad-supported. Arrington's right: it's all just the same thing over and over, and it's boring. And I never thought I'd agree with Arrington about anything.

ebiester 14y ago
That startup is Vegetality. And why would it matter if it was started by a woman in this context? (I can't wait until ~50% of startups are by women and it's not considered exceptional.)
- omni 14y ago
  Simple context would suggest that he was offering any details he remembered of the startup in the hope that someone would recognize it. Let's not overreact.
- Dave9k 14y ago
  Well it would be considered exceptional as women rarely ever lead in number of start-ups in any field.
diminish 14y ago
when singularity suddenly comes, all articles will be obsolete before being written; as soon as arrington starts to type their first letter. so there won't be any time to be bored. so enjoy getting bored, because after singularity you will only be perplexed and petrified. (unless you are upgraded or modified)

dholowiski 14y ago

Mike Arrington is bored with blogging. Does that mean he'll stop? Personally I think we're on the edge of a revolution, with the rapid shrinking (and increase in power) of computers, and Google boldly pushing into some pretty deep AI. Intelligent personal assistants. Self driving cars. Wearable augmented reality. There's going to be a lot of exciting stuff to write about in 2013.

fatalerrorx3 14y ago
2013 is also going to be a big year for Healthcare IT, the HHS is moving to open up clinical patient data via HHS. I doubt Google will venture again into the healthcare space, given the recent failure of Google Health, but it's going to be a turning point, they should have waited until the end of 2013 to close it down!
- zanny 14y ago
  > the HHS is moving to open up clinical patient data Don't want to sound too cynical here, but give me a break. The health care industry has resisted technology for 2 decades persistently, and any radical revolution in medicine will have so many public hurdles beyond what has already been dealt I don't see anything changing for Average Joes for decades just because of inertia, the powers that be, and special interests. I mean I still can't get medical care at all without cleaning out my bank account because I'm uninsured. It is personal bias, but I'd rather see that fixed first. $500 - $1000 a month in healthcare is obscene.
randomdata 14y ago
The Spirit autonomous tractor[1] becomes available to farmers this spring. I guess driverless vehicles are not exactly radical by now, but the fact that you can actually put your money down on one today is still pretty amazing to my eye. Though I guess it might not be all that interesting through the SV-centric lens. [1] http://www.autonomoustractor.com/ http://www.autonomoustractor.com/

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago

* What's here that wasn't here in 2007? Robots are still rising. Drones too. Voice recognition for everyone with Siri and the equivalent on Android. Natural language queries in Wolfram Alpha. Cheap, reliable 3d motion detection via kinect. 3d printing. Tissue printing and a $99 genetic scan https://www.23andme.com/ https://www.23andme.com/ Cheap SSDs. Self driving cars. Raspberry Pi boards. iPads (I had to check that one - the first iPad launch was just recently in April 2010!) and competing Android and windows tablets. github. * Or these lists: http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-became-science-facts-in-2 http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/27-science-fictions-that-beca... http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012 http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-... * Things that were new and not so well known in 2007, but are big now: The rise of online education via Khan academy, Coursera and Udacity. Workable electric cars. Twitter. Arduino boards. git

bodegajed 14y ago
I like what has happened with internet radio. But opposite of boring is exciting. I still couldn't get myself excited with the present though.
- sillysaurus 14y ago
  One thing that's fun to do when the present loses appeal is to envision the future. Write out in a journal page what a day in your envisioned future is like.
akkartik 14y ago
Yeah. http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-came-true-in-2012 http://io9.com/5971328/the-most-futuristic-predictions-that-...
enraged_camel 14y ago
Out of all those things you listed, self-driving cars and maybe - just maybe - 3D printing are the only truly exciting things, at least in terms of their potential to be disruptive.

edw519 14y ago

Find some customers whose hair is on fire. You'll never be bored again.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

scott_s 14y ago

Try creating instead of commenting on what other create. It's more fun.

wallflower 14y ago
Michael Arrington did try and fail to create once. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JooJoo
- scott_s 14y ago
  I had the impression that he did not really do creative work on that project, but high level management. I may be wrong.

swanlegs 14y ago

Oh, tech bloggers. Never happy. I think we should all try spending more time away from our devices. There is so much more to life than those glowing rectangles.

swalsh 14y ago

I seem to recall reading a few weeks ago that VC money was starting to move towards B2B companies. If that's true, you're not going to see a lot of exciting tech blog worthy start-ups. You will see a lot of progress in software, and real people will be receiving real value. In fact, i view that as a really positive thing. We don't need another social network enabled live drawing text-pad that opens a door. However my fiance definitely needs some software to reduce some of the redundant unsexy work she has no time to do

wildranter 14y ago

This guy is only making noise asking us to let go anything cool we've been working for years to improve his 2013's headlines. Don't fall for it. One thing hthe OP surely got is the title of the worst article of 2012. The year is almost over, and he aside the bar so high that now is almost impossible to take this for him. Now back to the point. Innovation is not some new shiny thing that no one has seen before. Instead, real innovation is something you work on until itself is the definition of perfection according to someone's vision. Thus iteration is the mother of innovation.

pxlpshr 14y ago

What a meta post. Arrington complaining about a problem his site perpetuated by popularizing consumer tech. [1] Maybe TechCrunch should step away from the desk/SF and put more reporters in other cities on the ground, instead of relying on so much inbound pitching? Technology, used loosely, is becoming an everyday aspect to many businesses so maybe TC also needs to reconsider their editorial position, too. [1] There are tons of other companies in cities around the US (and world) less interested in getting caught up in the SF noise. Spending PR budget to target TC just for some ego exposure amongst select group of peers at the cost of a less targeted audience isn't a wise decision for most. Austin has quiet a few smaller but sustaining tech companies doing pretty interesting things on a regular basis; $AWAY, $BV, $SLAB, Chaotic Moon, Mass Relevance, and numerous other fresh startups like Outbox [2] and DailyDot.com. I'm sure same is true for other cities. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-keep-your-new-years-resolutions-alive/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/31/seven-apps-that-will-keep-y... Don't I have the USA Today and Mashable for this? Did AOL make this decision? [2] Saving the USPS. http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-startup-takes-snail-mail-high-tech.html http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/business/988285-464/austin-st...

nhangen 14y ago
I suppose you're right. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. For years, they wouldn't fund or write about anything that wasn't a me-too product, and now he complains that there's nothing but me-too products. Thanks for finally waking up Michael.

Elizer0x0309 14y ago

How about the author be grateful for advances and if still bored, be proactive and join the rest of us, staying up late nights trying to add to the knowledge base of our species. Easy to point the finger outside, hard to point it inside.

g2e 14y ago

Ha! Easier said than done! Of course, everybody wants something new.

paul9290 14y ago

3D Printing, which I'm guessing will lead to printing up your own clothes. Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting. Our economies are struggling already. As tech continues to evolve alongside population increases, I have a minor worry about how the majority will sustain themselves?

wr1472 14y ago
The industrial revolution came and went just fine. I think we masses will be okay this time around too.
ht_th 14y ago
> Overall sounds amazing, yet for me the thought of no longer needing to buy objects or clothes is a bit disconcerting. Some observations: 1. You would start buying designs instead of products. You can go shopping for them, just on a meta-level kind of way. 2. You are able to change designs, get designs changed by others (you can get at a shop, maybe), you can share designs with others (social network of things?), you can communicate about these designs, and so on. Stuff can be personalized on a micro and macro scale, whereas now it can only be personalized on a macro scale through combining existing items. With 3D-printing you can personalize the items, too. 3. There will be a growing market for hand made stuff, albeit more exclusive. I think the first couple of decades the distinction between printed clothing and clothing made from fabrics will be clear. That means that traditional clothing will keep its value while printed clothing will be valued less. If anything, shopping will become a more immersive activity, I think. It'll change from a materialistic activity to a more service-oriented activity.

michaelochurch 14y ago

The people in charge have no vision. Everyone makes this complaint, because it's almost always true. The difference is that it's starting to matter. You can't "do technology" without vision. Not anymore. If you're running a toothpaste factory, you don't need vision. You just need competent execution. You need people to show up and follow the plan without complaint. This kind of work can actually be managed. If you can cut costs without compromising on quality, you do it. It's not about vision. That's already solved. Vision was relevant long ago when someone figured out how to make toothpaste. Your job is just to keep abreast of competitors and seek rent. VC-istan is a postmodern startup factory. It's technically not a company, but as a tight social network, it functions as one. VCs, rather than properly competing, talk to each other and agree on who they like and who they don't. VC-istan's "serial entrepreneurs" are just glorified PMs whose egos make them unemployable. The real bosses are the VCs. They want quick exits, as they should, because that's how the incentive systems that govern them are set up. The "tech press" are a sort of HR organization. Entrepreneurs are PMs, often mediocre ones, and engineers are chumps paid in lottery tickets. This is just a big company that has managed to dress itself up as a thousand small ones that happen to be all controlled by the same people. Now you have an ecosystem of commodity entrepreneurs hiring commodity engineers to implement commodity ideas. Ok, nothing to see here. Mobiles skwrking, mobiles chirping, take the money and run, take the money and run, take the money... Is it any wonder that this isn't producing innovation? It shouldn't be. Yet VC-istan is doing a lot better than most large companies do. It seems inevitable in large organizations (including economies) that the resources gravitate toward players who don't have much in the way of vision. Innovation is the exception. It adds variance. Given that we're social animals who judge one another based on reliability (low variance/minimal performance) rather than capability (expected return) it is socially dangerous. How many people have the talent and the resources? I'm sitting on +4 sigma talent but have no money. The people with boatloads of money seem (with a few exceptions) to be lacking in vision (which means I can't tell if they have talent, but I have doubts). I can't say that I blame them. Why take risks if you have no need to do so? What we have now is a generation that's used to technical progress and wants to take part. We have people who have been working their asses off since age 4, are now in their 20s and 30s, and want to take part in technical innovation. Most of them can't, because there's so little of it actually going on, and because most work activity is bullshit oriented toward keeping one warlord boss's status high at the expense of another's, rather than being invested in true progress. That's depressing. It creates a malaise. A deep sense of ennui. Yawn, another fart app. We now have an unprecedented number of ridiculously talented, over-educated people saying, "Dude, where's my machine learning job?" I think that 2013 will see the beginning of a Flight to Substance, and if I'm right, that will put that talent to better use than fart apps and toilet check-in services. I don't know how it will play out. I have no clue who will fund it. One sign of this is the increasing clamor for Valve-style open allocation. By the mid-2010s, you won't be considered a real tech company if you're running closed allocation (take heed, Google). If I'm right, that will help. That will help our generation work its way toward excellence. At least, some of us will go in that direction. Others will go off into the weeds of fart apps. May the market reward both crowds justly. Here's how we fix tech. * Open allocation. As long as the work is relevant to the company's needs, let people work on whatever they want. This enables native growth of technical talent. You don't have to poach qualified people with ridiculous signing bonuses. They quickly find a project that fits their skills and interests, and they actually improve while they work for you. Imagine that. * Stop fetishizing either extreme of company size. Not all large companies are bad, not all startups are good. Nor vice versa. If your 50-person startup is running closed allocation with typical HR policies, then it's just a big company that failed to get big and it should be considered a massive joke. I've heard of people getting turned down for transfers in 20-person companies because of "headcount" limitations. If you want to work at a startup, then drop that shit and work for a real fucking startup. * Demand work on hard problems. Don't build someone's fart app for 5% equity. If you're in the press, don't reward stupidity either. Instead of cheering on idiots who get acquired for outrageous sums, ridicule them.

Apocryphon 14y ago

Just a year ago, TechCrunch was also being short-sightedly wrong about established major companies being "boring": http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sap-is-not-and-the-world-has-gone-mad/ http://www.peopleprocesstech.com/why-techcrunch-is-boring-sa...

ojr 14y ago

Why do people undervalue the value brought by by these big companies, it would nice to have flying cars that most of the population would not be able to afford, or more trips to space that the wealthy can enjoy habitually, but the reality is these tech companies have reach their audience globally, call me crazy but I think that itself is amazing, we can always do better though

snitzr 14y ago

This article is 100% trolling. Don't feed.

hristov 14y ago

Ok i smell spam upvoting. There is no way 50 people thought this navel gazing article deserved an upvote. He does not even say anything. Pg, time to tweak the algorithms again.

dhugiaskmak 14y ago

You aren't bored, you're boring.

groby_b 14y ago

Sure, we only got self-driving cars, almost flawless speech recognition, concordant natural language queries, "Minority Report"-like UIs, Google Glass, space flight at 1/10th of the previous cost, 1GB fiber to the home, dramatically cheaper solar power, garage gen tech, 22nm chips, we did a spectacular landing on Mars, working Exoskeletons, the technology to find planets that are only slightly bigger than earth,... And Mr. Arrington is bored? Maybe he's just not paying attention.

ovi256 14y ago
Besides speech recognition and natural language queries, all the tech you cited is not yet distributed. And as someone wiser said "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed". So I'd discount the impact of tech demos like Google Glass, at least in the short term. Long term OTOH, I'd like to be as optimistic as possible.
Jayasimhan 14y ago
Most of what you mentioned came from big companies with a $billion or more. Mike is an Investor. When he says that innovation is not happening, its probably because he is not seeing good ones starting up, i.e a new comer with an amazing idea. We'll see the effect a few years from now, when most great products come from Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Apple. It is probably that way already. Every decade has had a game changer who came in from no where. Who is going to take away the 201x?
- icebraining 14y ago
  Who was the game changer of the 2000s?
  - ritchiea 14y ago
    Google and Apple were probably the two biggest game changers of the 2000s. Apple's being a resurgence and Google being a company founded at the very end of the 90s.

yankoff 14y ago

Of course you'll get bored if your primary source of tech news delivers you only pinterests and instagrams.

lubujackson 14y ago

There is so much amazing creation happening right now. Unfortunately for TechCrunch, it doesn't have, nor aspire to, $5 million seed funding, so TC won't hear about it.

narrator 14y ago

Kenyans now have $50 smart phones that exceed all but the latest phones in capability. We have $50 android tablets. We have reached a sort of technological plateau where stuff we consider awesome advanced technology is more available than clean drinking water. The great stagnation cometh, the center holds, things stick together more strongly than ever.

dredmorbius 14y ago
All highly commendable projects. There's no exit strategy, though, so VC aren't interested.

enraged_camel 14y ago

Peter Thiel actually talked about this in one of his CS 183 lectures at Stanford. He categorized progress as vertical vs. horizontal. Vertical progress can be defined as a problem of going from 0 to 1: you manage to do something totally new. Whereas horizontal progress is a problem of going from 1 to n, as in replicating an idea that has already been proven to be successful. Thiel said that most of our vertical progress comes from Silicon Valley, which I agree with. But I think SV also has a lot of horizontal progress, which is what Arrington is complaining about. Everyone and their mother is working on a social app, and every software company is going apeshit about mobile. Granted, tech news coverage is probably skewed in favor of horizontal progress, since vertical ideas by definition are so brand new and "out there" that most people would dismiss them as crazy. Still though, it would be great if someone came up with the next technology as innovative and groundbreaking as the iPhone or, to a slightly lesser extent, the iPad.

hexagonc 14y ago

Spoken like a brat spoiled by an embarrassment of riches. Even if one grants that not much innovative has happened since the iphone was released in 2007, and other comments have already falsified this claim, 2007 really isn't that long ago. We're talking about an event that completely changed the way people interact with mobile devices and consume content. A seismic shift that resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony) of empires. How often do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen before 2007? As anyone here can attest, innovation is hard -- really hard. I'm a nobody and I see this firsthand in my daily life. I've been working on a side-project for years that I hope will change the world and planned on building a proof of concept prototype last weekend. I expected to be done with the prototype in 2 days. It took over a week. A quarter of the way through construction, the code for the prototype just kept getting more and more complicated and kludegy, even though I thought I had designed it well enough to be straightforward. Although, I eventually had to redesign the whole thing, the final design ended up being much better and more reusable than the original POC I had planned. I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I could spend time to rethink the design. There were plenty of stories in 2012 to blog about where products were released half-baked because they were released too early. I suspect we will see many interesting things in 2013, much of which has been incubated and polished during the time that Michael thought nothing was happening.

kylebrown 14y ago
> A seismic shift that resulted in the rise (Apple) and fall (Nokia/RIM/Sony) of empires. How often do we expect that to happen? When did it last happen before 2007? Looking back, I was more surprised by the rise of Google (and Android/Linux) in a world dominated by Microsoft. But at 28, I'm probably just a little older than you. I'd also argue that the reason the last milestone was in 2007 isn't because of the iPhone, but because that's just before the global financial superbubble popped (foreshadowed by the bursting of the Nasdaq bubble in 02). IMO, that was the earthquake which stymied true attempts innovation. Many people stopped trying to innovate and starting worrying about finding a safe place for their retirement fund (still are), or worse, finding a job. Shoot me an email u feel like sharing your POC project with a fellow dreamer.

mburshteyn 14y ago

Ctrl+F Tesla, SpaceX, zero results. Really? I'm excited about these companies.

j45 14y ago

This is weird. Techcrunch in my eyes contributed to the startup hype machine that it's now complaining about? Celebrating funding like winning the Startup Lottery is only going to feed the monster of hype vs real innovation. Is it just me?

jballanc 14y ago

If you allow me a small anecdote... I used to live in Manhattan. Occasionally, I would go to the store to get paper towels or toiletpaper and buy the bulk-size. Invariably, the package would be too big to fit in the small plastic bags that were available and carrying it along with everything else was rather awkward. Last year I moved to Turkey, and one of the first things that I noticed is that all of the bulk-size packages of paper towels and toiletpaper have built in carrying straps. Now, this may seem like a very, very minor thing (and it's not unique to Turkey). On it's own it says nothing, but the longer I've been away from the US, the more and more I've noticed just these sorts of little things. It's the sum total of these "little things" that indicate to me that the US has, on a very fundamental level, stopped innovating. Oh, sure, the US will continue to produce new things. It'll probably even produce one or two big new things in the next couple years, but it's not the big things that drive the innovative spirit. Gather enough smart people in one place, give them enough time and enough money, and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a major innovation (or, at least a driverless car). You'll also waste an enormous amount of resources. A society that is innovative at its core has only to foster that innovation, in any small way, to get a far greater return on investment. In short: America has a tremendous head start, but America has become complacent. The "next big thing" just might come from somewhere where the people are still hungry.

cbs 14y ago
I think you're drawing too much from that observation. It says more about the market in the Turkey than the innovation in Turkey. Geographically-targeted versions of items are custom tailored for desires of local markets. Even if we assumed none of the TP brands in Turkey are multinational corporations, do you really think that the carrying strap idea wouldn't have been nicked by companies that do sell to other markets? Living in NYC and buying a big pack of toilet paper is an outlier as far as the US is concerned. Anywhere else in the states you would put the pack it in your shopping cart and roll it directly to your car door. For all we know, those straps could have been designed in the States, and the bean-counters decided adding the straps to the case manufacturing process is only cost-justified in plants serving an average population density of X and above. I only bring this up because I have, in the past, been working in the States and built better versions of products for sale exclusively in Europe.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

ironchief 14y ago

The bursting of a bubble is the BEST time for a blogger and entrepreneur. The red ocean calms, old truisms die, resources reform and a new paradigm is born. We've all perfected execution, optimized our UX, achieved our viral coefficient, developed on every platform, increased DAU and sold to Facebook. 100 Million users is the new 10 Million but in the next shift does that even matter? To be on this cusp is to define it as much as Microsoft/Netscape did in the 90s, Google/Apple did in the early 00s, Facebook/Twitter now. "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain So what's next? Disregard the mean and look for the outliers on both sides. Those are the true survivors, the extremophiles. When the mean shifts, they will have already adapted to the new environment, have succeeded, failed, persevered and flourished. So go there, fight and thrive because the future favors its creators, the extremophiles.

jjb123 14y ago

What gets made is what people want. We didn't get flying cars at $250,000/car. We got 140 characters for free because that's what people wanted. We didn't get hoverboards, not for lack of technology, but it just turned out that we wanted to search the world's knowledge with Google. We're frogs in boiling water, not knowing just how innovative we're becoming as a people. And sci-fi writers are just bad (or as bad as typical entrepreneurs) at guessing what people want.

icebraining 14y ago
Well, good sci-fi writers don't try. As Ursula Le Guin puts it, Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying. https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894 https://raw.github.com/gist/4424894

chetan51 14y ago

Actually, the last great human invention will probably be self-reflective Artificial Intelligence.

zmmmmm 14y ago

Overlooks tablets, siri, google now, google glass ... Seems like a case of self-imposed blindness. Narrow down your field of vision until you don't see anything exception startups oriented around mobile, iOS, social media and then complain that you're not seeing anything revolutionary. Tablets are arguably the biggest change in personal computing since the internet reached consumers. To complain things are boring is bizarre.

miami-dade 14y ago

As a founder, it's often better to start where your own pain points are, because sometimes you'll stumble upon an incredibly massive pain felt by the entire world. Now you're ready to do business. Be advised, however, because even if you manage to identify one such sharp pain point, and even if you have a solution, only rarely will you successfully be able to repackage it and market it to the masses. But to put in perspective, if you're working towards an affordable solution 99% of the world is compelled by extreme pain to use, you might very well be working on a billion dollar business. The question is, when are more startups going to realize that the biggest pain in the room is as clear as day? It's right in front of every single one of us. It's only a matter of time before people in massive numbers realize that 24/7 surveillance of all telecommuncations isn't fucking cool. People are already flocking to VPNs to get around downloading restrictions, so what happens when people realize they need a VPN to send a private email? Here the truth is contagious, and government elements can only repeat lies successfully for so long. The problem of the surveillance state is the very definition of sharp pain: Compared to the markets for cosmetic surgery, real estate, knee pain, back pain, ANY market you can think of - the prospect of having all of your telecommunications stored indefinitely if not monitored in real time by regimes teetering on the edge is an order of magnitude more concerning. When you consider that a 24/7 surveillance state by definition constitutes neverending pain, it's really no contest. Unwanted, unconstitutional surveillance measures are creating a seering hot, absolutely intolerable pain for the entire human population. This is a pain that demands a solution, ASAP. As a startup and as a developer, there are very few pursuits more worthy of your time than furthering human rights and averting absolute tyranny. Curiously, thanks in large part to Bitcoin, the startup community now has the power to fund itself anonymously and innovate solutions that actually matter, without outside interference. The clock is ticking.

b1daly 14y ago
What are these pain points related to the rise in surveillance you mention. This seems to be an article of faith on HN: that lack of privacy protections, increasing amounts of personal data being aggregated, and intensifying surveillance is creating a perfect storm of bad consequence for civilians at large. But I never hear about what the harm is except for the exceptional cases. Anecdotally, none of my aquaintances has had a single adverse life event that can be attributed to these trends. On the other hand, adverse events related to money/jobs, health issues, issues with intimacy and social isolation, being too busy: these are daily occurrences. I'm bringing this up here just because your post reminded me I wanted to run this question by the HN community.

lucian303 14y ago

Lots of people are bored. This is the kind of garbage that should stay off HN. A contentless POST. I believe that's a HEAD.

sixQuarks 14y ago

I don't think most people realize how big Google Glass is going to be, but that's in 2014. I predict it will be a bigger leap than the iPhone in 2007.

raphman 14y ago

Nice reply by Ray Cromwell: > I love how Arrington, Thiel, Graham, and others spent years talking about how you don't need any college, promoted quick-buck social media startups with no plan, and kids fresh out of high school, and now they are sad there is no flying cars. [...] https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpcRnu https://plus.google.com/110412141990454266397/posts/YLXqGgpc...

akiselev 14y ago
Humans have been talking about flying cars since the 60s. If we would have had them by now, their creators would have been educated well before Thiel Graham and Arrington.

mr_luc 14y ago

Mike, Build something yourself. Sincerely, The people who are not bored.

Too 14y ago

> I don’t want to read any more stories about how Facebook cloned something they couldn’t buy. Or that Twitter banned something that they tried to buy but Facebook got there first. Or the press regurgitating how Google+ is somehow not flailing. Or about the number of Android v. iPhone devices. Or Samsung’s patent mishaps. Or how Yahoo is winding down things in Asia. The funny thing is that techcrunch is one of the most guilty sites when it comes to writing about these things.

hkj 14y ago

It seems he is about to realize that things move in waves. Currently people are learning how to take advantage of all this new mobile technology and once they have done that we will get our new wave of awesome shit.

jorisw 14y ago

TC;DR.