Cheers, fixed (as soon as the cache updates)
2,200 karma · joined November 24, 2011
Our minds are amazing machines.
I've spent most of my adult life outside of the US, after having spent my childhood and university in Florida. Now, when I travel in the States, I see a _lot_ of good everywhere I go, but it's undeniable that other countries are doing certain things better (I'd argue that nobody has it all together, though Singapore comes mighty close in my book).
This is actually a great thing for the US in many ways -- we've spent almost a century in the lead, having to figure out what works through trial and error. Now the entire world is participating in this trial and error, and we are (in theory, if we're willing to be a bit humble and admit we don't know it all) able to benefit from the discoveries made without paying for the trials.
There will probably never be a repeat of the 1950s, where the United States dominated the world in almost every category, but ... who cares? The 1950s sucked in a lot of ways for a lot of people, most Americans included. That doesn't mean we can't maintain parity, and exceed in certain areas in which we've made priorities.
Given that Facebook (attempts to) model our existing social networks, and that the vast majority of people socialize with people of significantly similar cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, this diversity of thought is already (for the majority) a lie. We don't go to Facebook to see how the "other" lives -- we go there to get updates on friends that are comfortingly similar to ourselves.
The people that are willing to pay app.net's admission fee are going to largely be people who socialize with other folks who are willing to pay app.net's admission fee. It's no different than the clientele at a high end restaurant, and the existence of such restaurants hasn't precluded the existence or utility of lower end restaurants.
Makes you wonder what 50 years hence things will be like, given that the microtrends to which we pay so much attention will likely not continue.
And people say the future isn't what it was made out to be.
I do, however, wonder how much of the backlash against college is coming from liberal arts majors that ran up crazy debt while earning a degree that doesn't immediately lead to high paying work. I did a lot of the same sort of things the OP is talking about when I was his age (it was 14 years ago, though, so there were some differences, but it was similar), and I managed a college course load. I graduated in 2003 without debt (state school, didn't go crazy on the weekends, worked hard), and while I would have loved to have the extra time that you have now, over the last decade having a degree (even a silly BA Political Science like I have) has been really, _really_ useful. Most of the jobs I've had since graduation wouldn't have even looked at my resume without that degree on it.
Things are changing and it's becoming easier to show off your skills without a piece of paper proving that you meet some university's curriculum requirements, but given the relatively low real costs of a college education, I'd be hard pressed to recommend anyone not get one.
If you're doing the first, you can work reasonable schedules (hard, yes, but not insane), and create value, and build your business. This is, in my view, what Github (where the author works) does.
If you're doing the latter, then you have to kill yourself because you need to cash in before everyone realizes what you're doing is either 1) actually worthless, or 2) not the coolest thing on the block anymore, and moves on to the next fad.
There are basic principles you can learn, but every service (child) is different, and you'll have to take that basic general knowledge and figure out how to apply it in your specific case.