Tim O'Reilly's piece in the LA Times has a lot of people talking:
He is urging young entrepreneurs and engineers to stop making some of the sillier software that lets Facebook users throw virtual sheep at their friends or download virtual beer on iPhones, and instead start making a real difference in the world.
He says it's not just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do -- especially as the credit crunch spreads to Silicon Valley, venture financing becomes scarce and start-ups have to retrench.
When this grizzled, 54-year-old tech-industry veteran talks, Silicon Valley tends to listen, if only to argue with him.
This is actually about the 6th time I have heard this this year. I have to say I pretty much agree on the face of it. But I wonder if its not so much a generational question as its that computers are just not as challenging as they used to be. Writing PERL shopping carts and online editors were a challenge in 1995, not so much any more. Maybe the issue is that "kids" of today who want to work on enabling technologies and do real innovation have migrated off to biotechs and nanotechs.
We still have a lot of problems to solve in computers, so don't get me wrong we can use help from the next generation. But you get the sense the industry is maturing and not this wide open greenfield like biotech and nanotech or early dotcom days. There are a lot of cool things going on, but a lot of it seems like incremental upgrades. Important yes, but earth shattering, not so much. Take for example, Infinera, very cool stuff but its your classic, "we don't make X, we just make X work better." product. I am not complaining - as an engineer, I like reliability. As a security person, I need better security tools. As a digital citizen, I want things to work better. But you know all of us making better brakes, better airbags, and better seat belts, is not going to be as exciting as the building the first car. What was the last computer technology that was mind blowingly innovative to you?
