Needs more parallax. I feel like I'm reading or something: I get the annoying sensation of thinking. I want to feel like the internet is washing over me and flowing through me. That I am one with magic electrons and the thought-beams of narcissists and sycophants.
Half the items I see on kickstarter I think are parodies, especially with the high design stock music, ideation sketches on the wall and the animated group brain storming sessions. But hipsters are soft targets full of much self-importance and wow.
Indeed it may, but it's a general framework of pragmatism which accepts short term compromises along the way. Often leading to less than ideal outcomes in the long run. Hence, my claim it is the opposite of idealism. Not necessarily a better opposite.
To be fair, this generally happens with age anyway. We slowly come to the realization that idealism is often a mask for arrogance and a false-confidence borne of insecurity. As we mature, we not only see the failings of our former naive selves, but the folly of such idealism in and of itself. The opposite of idealism is not cynicism, but realism.
Ah, to be a kid in the Age of Stupid again. When tech friend after tech friend would bail to be with an unpromising start-up for the promise of gazillions in options. When bank accounts were passe, and everyone kept their savings in etrade. Friday night's mood was determined by Yahoo's stock price. When the phrase "you don't get it" was used instead of logic. The tech valuations may seem crazy today, but they are absolutely nothing compared the Age of Stupid. And just what was Apple's stock price in 1998?
I blame magical thinking. Start with nebulous concepts without definitions (like "healthcare" and "profit"). And use Orwellian distraction and conflation to blame all problems on Oceanic Republicans and other Enemies of the State.
Anyone paying attention to the news back in 2001? Remember when Sun and the other tech companies were offering all kinds of totalitarian tech solutions (like national IDs) to "solve" terrorism. Ah, how times change.
By safe he probably means "enterprisy." OOP is pretty much a joke when your realize every "pattern" ends up being the singleton with a dozen levels of inheritance by the time a web app development team gets through with it. Every other pattern will fail by the times the marketing and executives get hold of it. It should be called the Fox & Tramp bowl of Singleton pattern. But I digress as I step on the enterprisy toes of team developers.
We could hope Node becomes such a ubiquitous solution, but the love HN is no great predictor of the future. Often it seems if the early adopters of HN love something, it is doomed. It's got to grab the middle of the bell curve's attention and drag the tail of the HN crowd to it kicking and screaming.
Perhaps I'm the only one that finds it odd that Pintrest, Imgur, and even Facebook are filled with photos of text, or text is the dominant theme, rather than images? A meme is really the utter destruction and decent of a meaningful image into a text-based cliche. The designers of the internet have created a world so poorly usable by the average joe that billionaires are made fixing and herding stupid.
Thanks for your insightful comments and representing the paradox of the internet: Alarmist tones are required to generate interest in a story, but taking the time to explain the cognitively challenging details is instantly off-putting in an article. The average internet users is becoming so stupid, even the simplified versions are TL;DR. I've come to rely on Hacker News comments in ways I used to rely on Slashdot stories. The SNR at Reddit is overwhelming.
Watch the comments on Ars, they won't be all that outraged. Something funny is going on over there. They are learning to love Statism and its philosophies.
You or someone you know probably suffers from a monoculture, statist-based education. Dig through some pre-20th century civil thought and you will come across: "Adversarial Systems" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system
There you will find a natural remedy dating back thousands of years that holds that subservience and conformity are poor forms of governance.