ryochiji (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ryochiji) wrote,@ 2008-04-15 01:07:00 |
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I've been having a bit of a crises of purpose lately. Maybe I'm getting old. Maybe I got a little bit too disillusioned working in a big company. Or maybe I got smarter, wiser, and see what's really going on. Whatever it is, I'm not so excited about the industry I'm in any more.
A few years ago, I was excited about being a web developer. I was excited about building applications for end-users (real people!) to make their lives better. I came to Yahoo because I was excited about building software for hundreds of millions of people around the world. But 3 years and just as many failed-ish projects later, I'm slightly less optimistic about my prospects of making great software there. On the other hand, I look around at what else is going on in the industry, and there's very little that truly excites me. Google's doing a couple of interesting things, Amazon's also doing some cool stuff, and Facebook's kinda cool but probably won't survive the year if they can't monetize (and speaking of monetization, let's not forget that most of this industry is based on selling our eyeballs to advertisers who want to push shit in front of us) and then there's a smattering of frivolous start-ups, most of which are me-toos that will cease to exist in the next year or two.
Then I take my head out of the cluster-fuck that's Silicon Valley, and what do I see? I see all sorts of serious badness going down. I see people losing homes because they borrowed/were loaned more money than they should've. I see banks teetering on the edge of collapse, mostly of their own doing. I see a government that's hopelessly preoccupied with fighting phony wars against an equally phony enemy, while its political and economic power is declining at an alarming rate elsewhere. I see an environment that's hurtin', and nobody's doing enough to fix it. I see insane food prices and shortages. I see my girlfriend who's struggling to make ends meet without even health insurance, despite her top rate college education.
So when I go to work and people are talking about how to make another "A zombie bit yo ass" app on a social networking site, I can't help but wonder if our priorities are slightly misplaced. There was a time, not too long ago, when I thought software could fix the world's ills. I hoped blogging and citizen journalism would expose government and corporate corruption. Instead, we got lolcats. I thought social networking would allow people to organize and mobilize. Instead, we have a generation of kids who think joining a Facebok group counts as "activism". At the end, we're just a bunch of lazy and complacent automatons clicking through web pages, while what little attention we devote to the world is literally sold to the highest bidder.
The worst part of it is, other than ranting about it online (yes, how ironic?), I don't know what I can do. I bet the last 7-8 years of my life on the notion that coding was my way of helping the world. I was wrong. What now? Do I learn something else? Do I join the peace corps? Or maybe I should just give up on trying to save humanity from itself, and go hole up somewhere like I've always wanted to. I wish I knew.
A few years ago, I was excited about being a web developer. I was excited about building applications for end-users (real people!) to make their lives better. I came to Yahoo because I was excited about building software for hundreds of millions of people around the world. But 3 years and just as many failed-ish projects later, I'm slightly less optimistic about my prospects of making great software there. On the other hand, I look around at what else is going on in the industry, and there's very little that truly excites me. Google's doing a couple of interesting things, Amazon's also doing some cool stuff, and Facebook's kinda cool but probably won't survive the year if they can't monetize (and speaking of monetization, let's not forget that most of this industry is based on selling our eyeballs to advertisers who want to push shit in front of us) and then there's a smattering of frivolous start-ups, most of which are me-toos that will cease to exist in the next year or two.
Then I take my head out of the cluster-fuck that's Silicon Valley, and what do I see? I see all sorts of serious badness going down. I see people losing homes because they borrowed/were loaned more money than they should've. I see banks teetering on the edge of collapse, mostly of their own doing. I see a government that's hopelessly preoccupied with fighting phony wars against an equally phony enemy, while its political and economic power is declining at an alarming rate elsewhere. I see an environment that's hurtin', and nobody's doing enough to fix it. I see insane food prices and shortages. I see my girlfriend who's struggling to make ends meet without even health insurance, despite her top rate college education.
So when I go to work and people are talking about how to make another "A zombie bit yo ass" app on a social networking site, I can't help but wonder if our priorities are slightly misplaced. There was a time, not too long ago, when I thought software could fix the world's ills. I hoped blogging and citizen journalism would expose government and corporate corruption. Instead, we got lolcats. I thought social networking would allow people to organize and mobilize. Instead, we have a generation of kids who think joining a Facebok group counts as "activism". At the end, we're just a bunch of lazy and complacent automatons clicking through web pages, while what little attention we devote to the world is literally sold to the highest bidder.
The worst part of it is, other than ranting about it online (yes, how ironic?), I don't know what I can do. I bet the last 7-8 years of my life on the notion that coding was my way of helping the world. I was wrong. What now? Do I learn something else? Do I join the peace corps? Or maybe I should just give up on trying to save humanity from itself, and go hole up somewhere like I've always wanted to. I wish I knew.
