Reading wired does that to me - it puts little ideas in my mind and starts to inspire me for a little while (only wired magazine would do that to me - what a dork) I read stories like the one about how google started (dorm rooms turned into server rooms), or where the web was 10 years ago (quote newsweek: "The Internet? Bah!"), I start to think about what i could maybe do that would be revolutionary, or could change the world - i think it would be really fun to create something that people can turn into a verb (googling).
So then I actually start to think about stuff i could possibly do, and i come up with pretty good ideas for things that I had no idea existed, but then i get shot down when i find out that CNN has been doing it for years. well crap, nevermind.
check it out - in one article about the past, present and future of the web, wired cites a survey done by macworld 10 years ago that researched what could be expected of the internet for a $10 a month fee. guess what they said: "educational courses, reference books, electronic voting, and library information. The bottom of the list ended with sports statistics, role-playing games, gambling, and dating." Now, here's the results from a survey taken in 2004 on what people actualy do on the internet: "playing games, "just surfing," shopping - the list ends with responsible activities like politics and banking. (Some even admitted to porn.)"
freaking a. people were excited about being able to see how many copies a library in tulsa has of "catcher in the rye" --- look at it now.
if you want to find something out, you google it. plain and simple. (sorry claire, you yahooligan ;) if you want to buy something, chances are if you're not older than 35, you're going to get on the internet first. you're going to froogle it, of you're going to go to overstock.com and get the best damn price out there from places that have no retail overhead. if you want to check the weather, you don't sit around stareing at the TV for 10 minutes until "weather on the 9's" comes on your local tv station. you get on accuweather or weather.com and you find out if it's going to rain in 10 min, in less than 30 seconds. you can even play weatherman and watch the radar to give yourself a personlized forecast.
10 years ago, laptops were as thick as encyclopedias, and virtually only as portable as the nearest electrical outlet. now, people head out to their favorite coffee shops with their notebooks that actually look like notebooks, and work on them for as long as they want.
ok, here's the point - i want to be part of something like that. i don't want to just sit around, taking classes that are going to point me in the right direction for a standard future. i'm not saying i have what it takes to be extraordinary in my field, but what i'm saying, is that i want to sprint down the unbeaten path, so fast that i don't leave a trail - one that won't be found for years.
there are so many things that people didn't think the web could do (ie: e-commerce, virtual communities, voice telephone service, etc) - the one thing that i really think is revolutionary when it comes to the new net, is that people are moving from being consumers of content (shown by traditionally much higher download than upload speeds - still that way today) and are now creating much of the content themselves. think of bittorrent - you have to share the file you're downloading to download anymore of it at a reasonable speed, think of blogging (duh), think of podcasting (a blog in the form of an mp3 radio broadcast) - it's all created by regular users like you and me. and it's the hottest thing since instant messaging clients.
i want to creat the new "thing" on the internet. use it for something you didn't think it could be used for. and make people go "wow."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
matt, it's plain and simple: the internet is for porn. all that other crap is the equivalent of the "safety features" of a radar detector. sure, they're nice and all, but that's not really the point. in the words of a big blue monster:
so grab your dick and double-click for porn porn porn
actually, i think that's a very noble idea you have. and i believe you could do it, too. and when you do, don't forget your dear old friend, who is going to be a poor professor, and even though i'll come up with innovative shit, it'll never be worth anything but a publication and some grant money. *sigh* oh well, all in the name of science, or some bullshit like that.
upon blind faith they place reliance
what we need more of is science
you're such a dork :-P
like steve, I too would be more than happy to get in on something like that, I think it's probably the dream of everyone in our field (whether they're geeks enough to admit it or not), these people are like rock stars to us and it's where we all dream of ending up, that's right, rich enough to buy any gadget we want
ah yes, all in the name of science. and dude, the publications are worth more than grant money - you can totally go up to a chick in a bar (preferably near a brainac university) and tell her that you're published in "really sophisticated quarterly" and totally get some.
oh, and [digitized voice] "put your seatbelt on, bitch"
you're dating a dork. ha! FACE!
(aww, you have a nice face sweetie :-D )
i can't believe you guys are calling dibs on that. of course, if i ever do come up with a really cool idea, of course the first people i call will be you two. let's go be rock stars. pda carrying rock stars.
people seem to like things that take all the work out of the process. take podcasting for example. r we really becoming lazy enough that we can't read a blog (also a relativly new innovation) we actually want to listen to it instead, damn people just pick up the phone or go hang out with someone.
so here's what you need to do mendick. you need to invent something that takes all effort, save a mouse click out of some process that may currently take two mouse clicks, or, *gasp*, reading. if i were you, i would come up with a way to use the internet so that i would never have to think again, either that, or just design a really good porn site concept
damn, i never really thought of things like that. it's true, innovations are really just taking simple tasks that people should be able to do by themselves, and do it for them. hotness. i'm gunna be thinking about that all night dude, you do realize that.
Post a Comment