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Comment by MichaelGG | Hacker News Reader

The difference now is that it's much harder. The overall competence and just general knowledge level is higher. Sorta like physics - essentially no one is going to make a discovery today just sitting around and thinking, unlike hundreds of years ago. Even comp sci: look at the algorithms that are named, coming from the 60s or 70s. You could invent them just by thinking about a problem. (I did exactly this. I spent a month designing some information retrieval code, because I've got no education, and then my friend pulls out a textbook and shows me my work, down to the same drawings.)

It's a good sentiment, because there still is tons of stuff out there still waiting. And not going out there and doing things is a sure way to not get s hit. But it's certainly more crowded and expectations seem a lot higher these days.

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That's only really the case in mature fields (e.g. compsci), but the article pointed out several newly emerged fields, where yes, you could well create a significant discovery just by sitting and thinking about it (providing you have a decently broad background knowledge).

This finally has really hit home for me while getting neck-deep in the crypto-currency world, and in particular the realms of "smart contracts" and "DACs". In that world, even the most straightforward things have yet to actually be built. We haven't even solved the easy problems yet, much less the hard ones. I'm honestly more worried about being too early than too late.

The problem is that most people haven't even heard of these fields, and the ones that have generally aren't that interested. And they very well may be right to not care. In retrospect, it's obvious that the internet was a huge deal, but in the 80s it was entirely possible to be skeptical of whether the average person had much use for accessing other people's computers.

My recommendation is therefore to research the various things happening at the fringe of modern technology, and see what catches your eye. There are great strides to be made in a variety of fields, and one or more of them might turn out to be important. At the very least, it'll be fun.

Sure, in some areas it is much harder - but those aren't the areas where you're going to succeed. Look at Pebble - when they first started in 2008, no one was doing wearables. The founder hacked a Nokia screen with an Arduino - that was the first prototype.

You just have to find the areas that are still new enough that an amateur can be an expert. Nate Silver refers to this as finding "where the water level is low".

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