cherenkov

As I scour the landscape, I see some incredibly smart people who have toiled their way through competitive exams, secured admissions into some of the world’s prestigious universities and engineering programs, some even have enrolled into post-doc programs. I respect the commitment, dedication and their brilliance. I wish I did the same. I feel these people have traveled the farthest distance towards the horizons of knowledge in their areas of study.

Now, here is the unfortunate trend: these folks - after all that sweat and tears end up blogging or working in some stupid thought-leadership positions in some make-believe company creating the next web 2.0 application? Why? Why do folks who have toiled their way through Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or Materials Science end up in some stupid shop “managing” web application developers? I don’t get it.

Why can’t these talented folks with so much knowledge work on harder problems? Why settle for stupid web 2.0 applications? They have the best opportunity to contribute and create a much larger impact as opposed to the creating the next forgettable web 2.0 application that sells movie tickets or detergent. It is not even an interesting algorithm, it is a web application!

One reason I can think of is that they have no genuine interest in their area of study and they probably continued with their Ph.D. just to get it out of the way and accumulate tenure in some university. Another reason could be that they want to cash-out on their credentials and join the web application herd.

Weak Foundations - Solid Implementations:

Not a day passes by without hearing about some new idea as to how one can use the social networking data to create some value out of it. The latest post cites how one can use a competitor’s twitter followers to be your next contact list. Nothing wrong with the concept, looks neat.

What bothers me is that sometimes the whole exercise seems to be for the sake of an exercise and nothing else. Social Networking data is gathered, and a huge collection of computing theories, algorithms and tools are let loose to operate on the data and come out with interesting opportunities.

Weak connections: At the root of everything is the “strength” of a social networking connection, the strength of intent with which one forges a connection. I believe this force is extremely weak, passive and non-committal. The problem I have with these new tools and ideas is that they overestimate the commitment variable in these bonds and apply existing theories to declare new CRM tools, campaign management tools, etc.

A company is not a person: many companies seem to get on the social networking bandwagon but again, I question the value of the bond - if the strength of the bond involving individuals is in itself so weak,I suppose the strength of bonds with organizations must be even weaker because organizations are not individuals. So when someone “follows” or “likes” some company, it may not mean much in the sense of “intent.” They “follow” or “like” only because these are the only options available.

Either way, I feel that there is an entire industry cropping up that is being built on this premise that a social networking bond represents a strong probability of “intent.” I think we may be in for a surprise.

I have been following posts on Hacker News, albeit, not religiously. I wish I had time to neatly categorize posts based on the content in the post but in general, a few themes standout: (1) sagely start-up wisdom (2) another day, another web application (3) another day, another debate about the best MVC framework for the web app (4) VC gossip (5) gossip around Apple, Google and Facebook (6) Another post about how language X sucks, a contrarian spinning his/her wheels on why language Y rocks. That pretty much sums up hacker news. The Signal/Crap ratio is scary if you rip apart fluff masquerading as technology.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against the site. What bothers me is this penchant to appropriate the "start-up" cool as opposed to focusing on the idea, product, or service that is being innovated -- as if a start-up is the end-all-be-all in life. Is start-up association the technology community parallel to celebrities who are famous for being famous? That brings us to another abused word namely, "innovation." Since when did 100 lines of web application code become innovation? Where is the innovation that focuses on the hard problems? I am not sure if there can be a scale for innovation but a 100 line web 2.0 application is no match for the integrated circuit. I am sorry, I cannot put these two in the same league. As a developer myself, I can tell you, code is just code. Pasting code on blogs and sites is just show-off; much like the friendly sales guy in a suit who is flashing the latest smartphone at the airport to appropriate the phone's coolness.

What seems to be also missing is the appreciation for incremental and painstaking detail oriented innovation. There is joy in watching sustained growth in small increments. The satisfaction comes not from the magnitude of change but in nourishing the small yet subtle and perceivable increments that are part of the larger vision of a hard problem.