I'm surprised at the lack of critique leveled against this now that it's resurfaced here. I can understand the drama and excitement of seeing an idea through and having a business that changes things on the other end. However, 2014 has extremely little in common with 1994, and we're bearing the consequence of those earlier eras in ways that I don't think we fully appreciated in 2014.
The commercial internet is dominated by exactly who'd expect to be dominating it. The space for competitors is in increasingly specific niches. What we do have has been demonstrated to have deleterious political, social, and emotional effects. If you're building something now it needs to account for this power imbalance. In 1994 you could just grab a good domain and slap things together because there was little precedent. That simply would not happen today, we have already reproduced corporate power online and it's a beefy gatekeeper.
We might dissolve these issues with the next big thing (and honestly, I'm rooting for ReadUp)—but it's insincere to think that anything other than working to resolve these tensions is what we should be striving for. That sounds like the long, frustrating, and revolutionary work of a people that want to do better for themselves. Not so much the gleeful tech optimism that characterized Web 1.0 & 2.0 entrepreneurs.
I'm surprised at the lack of critique leveled against this now that it's resurfaced here. I can understand the drama and excitement of seeing an idea through and having a business that changes things on the other end. However, 2014 has extremely little in common with 1994, and we're bearing the consequence of those earlier eras in ways that I don't think we fully appreciated in 2014.
The commercial internet is dominated by exactly who'd expect to be dominating it. The space for competitors is in increasingly specific niches. What we do have has been demonstrated to have deleterious political, social, and emotional effects. If you're building something now it needs to account for this power imbalance. In 1994 you could just grab a good domain and slap things together because there was little precedent. That simply would not happen today, we have already reproduced corporate power online and it's a beefy gatekeeper.
We might dissolve these issues with the next big thing (and honestly, I'm rooting for ReadUp)—but it's insincere to think that anything other than working to resolve these tensions is what we should be striving for. That sounds like the long, frustrating, and revolutionary work of a people that want to do better for themselves. Not so much the gleeful tech optimism that characterized Web 1.0 & 2.0 entrepreneurs.