The environment we're in affects us a lot. As young kids, very few consciously choose to pursue social situations, as our minds are not that developed. A lot of it happens due to our life situation.. ie we live near a park, we live near lots of kids our age, or our parents hang out with other parents who have kids our age, etc.
I agree. I remember the day when you could drop by a friend's house to chill w/o calling beforehand, or sending a text message or IM. or the days when you could just drop by the park and have a good chance of meeting a couple of buddies there. Everything now seems so structured. Have to arrange meetups with friends. Have to arrange this or that. And lots of socializing happens after work, where the intention is to just get drunk, and forget about the day.
What is the root cause of this problem though? Is it just a natural result of overpopulation + our natural tendency to be selfish? is it overpopulation + the need to give up individual needs to support the whole? is it the natural result of our biological instincts and we're just really fucked up species?
I don't think overpopulation is the core problem in the developed world. Some developed countries have had to take on immigrants lest their populations decrease. We have great systems to generate wealth, but they come at the price of a massively skewed distribution.
Root cause? In the U.S.: bad values. Culturally speaking, the South has won the Civil War. That's why we remember Northern generals negatively and Southern ones as noble. That's also why we don't have universal healthcare (Truman proposed it in '48, and was shot down because Dixiecrats didn't want to desegregate the hospitals.) Now, the geographical distinction is not very meaningful (there are foaming-at-the-mouth racists in New England and enlightened, liberal people in Alabama) but the last bastion of the true North (the progressive, positive-sum mentality) is Silicon Valley and even that has its entrenched in-crowds. Getting access to VCs is still about connections and that's not very Northern.
I'm going to anger people by saying this, but New York (although it's still one of the best places to live in the US) is essentially a Southern city at this point. What's the first thing you do every month? Pay an enormous rent check to someone who's had real estate in the family for over 100 years. What's the first thing you are asked in "casual" conversation? "What do you do?" Or, "What is your position in society?" And "those who matter" still go to cotillions and keep to themselves and shoot quail in the Hamptons.
What do I mean by the South winning, culturally speaking? I mean that this is a society run according to position, authority, and entrenchment rather than the talent and courage to have and share the right ideas. The country is run by private-sector bureaucrats who've discovered ways to capture value generated from the labor of others.
We're not a "really fucked up species". Humans are not naturally good or evil. They're naturally unskilled-- ignorant, deluded, and often incompetent, but not evil. The purpose of civilization is to maintain the knowledge that helps people do the right thing. Unfortunately, societies become corrupt rapidly and develop elites that have defined themselves by doing the wrong thing, and then those wrong things begin to define the social tone and corruption sets in. Civilization is a storehouse of knowledge that helps people figure out what the right thing to do is, but societies are incentive systems that usually encourage doing the wrong thing.
Yep, that's the point. People who use gamification for things like green living and saving energy, or advertising, or redeeming rewards, etc are missing the point. There's nothing to freaking gamify. Nobody feels any sense of achievement from saving energy, or redeeming airmile rewards, or checking in to places and doing random stuff.
Yes they do. First of all, saving energy is in itself a reward. Moreover, that's easily gameable by simply comparing yourself to a group of strangers at their energy efficiency house. Airline miles is kinda a hard one, except for the people in that group, competing there (and I'm sure there is), and as far a s random stuff...I'm here in large part because every once in a while I wonder if I can't get a few upvotes on hacker news, hopefully by saying something helpful or insightful, of course.
Saving energy doesn't instill a sense of achievement. Nobody has a bucket list with an item that says "Save as much energy as I can". It just doesn't inspire anyone. Sorry if that's your startup idea.
Inbound links, organic search, and word-of-mouth are the main methods. I experimented with AdWords, but the conversion rate wasn't good enough, and I was too lazy to try to improve it.
Isn't this just a fancy derivative of "fill this form out and we'll send you a free iPod?". Because that's all it is..
If you tell me people want achievements, well.. Achievements in games feel good because there's actual skill involved, and it feels like you mastered something. You can't say the same for doing random tasks online. You can't just throw a word like 'achievement' or 'score' on top of what you're doing, and think the effect will be the same.
What's wrong with getting a free iPod for filling out a form? The problem with these types of companies is execution; they're usually really shady and have a lot "catches". If a company came along that could get rid of all that and do it right, wouldn't you be filling out forms too?
Nothing wrong, just that you're going to have difficulty finding advertisers that will agree to this type of advertising. You're not in any way solving the problem of finding relevant audiences for their ads. You're just throwing an incentive for random people to do things for prizes, and hope they will buy whatever the ad is about. But users just want the free goods.
The problem is not how to make users interested in an ad. The core problem is connecting an ad to a relevant audience. You can't fake interest in an ad that's not relevant to what you want at the point. People have tried that with FB ads, but the CTR are horrible, and people get pissed when they see the ad had nothing to do with the actual product.
I like the point about how being in covers of tech blogs doesn't mean much. It's all mostly noise, and if one did a study, I bet they'd find the failure rate of startups covered by tech blogs to be around the same as the overall failure rate of the average business. E
The true cost of commuting is actually the stress that piles on you, bit by bit.. it can contribute to divorce, physical disease, high blood pressure, loneliness, etc. Just ask anyone that has to ride their car into NYC traffic, or even take the crowded subways on a daily basis.
In my eyes, this is the biggest cost of commuting, especially you're driving. It used to take my wife anywhere from 1-3 hours on her return trip (depending on rain, snow, traffic, people looking at flashing lights, etc. - it is Chicago after all).
She doesn't do that anymore. Now she drives 10 minutes maximum each. The less stress is very noticeable, both for her and me.
Yes. Around here in CT, it's fairly common to have a one hour train ride commute to Manhattan. Sure it is better than driving, but it still is pretty soul sucking according to my friends who have done it.
