Panels, Vision, Yapping and Waving

December 1, 2009 – 4:50 pm

Google Wave, as it stands right now, is useless to me and 99% of people not pretending to be smarter than everyone else.  The other 1% are fooling themselves into loving an amazing technology that solves no problem….YET.

But, it does get me thinking about hype.

“The next ____”.  etc.

You go watch a “visionary” presentation, and essentially it’s a string of soundbytes intended purely to make the speaker appear smarter than the world.

You go watch a “panel discussion” on a topic, and essentially it’s 4 people pushing out soundbytes trying to one-up each other, despite the fact they all agree.

They all know where the web is headed.

They all know what is dead.

Then, you realize…these are the same types that told us RSS was going to kill the website.  These are the “flying cars by 2000″ technology-porn stars of today.  These are the climatologists and this is their perverted version of “peer review”.

And hopefully, you realize that NO ONE is going to TELL you what is next….but that YOU are going to create what is next.  We’re not destined to create “the web” that 4  guys on a panel think should happen if they had their way.  Nope….we’re entrepreneurs….and we’re going to create value by building what people want and need.

Of course it is important to know the trends of your industry.  Of course it is important to listen to experts.  But use caution….it is much wiser to see what the real experts are building than to listen to what  panelists predict  they will be building in the future.

Visionaries build and educate.  Frauds speculate with grandeur.

  • henrylow
    Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.

    www.onlineuniversalwork.com
  • Well said Andy. We're building what we most want, and believe others will benefit from. Part of the creation of value is listening to the needs of others. The panels you are describing sound pretty closed off from reality.

    We need fast communication channels (Google wave fails here atm).

    We need fast and effective filters (search is good, real time search not so much).

    We need more powerful web programming tools to empower the common man or woman to build a tool in their area of expertise without having a Ph.D in comp sci. I'm digging through many web dev tools now and pulling my hair out.

    What will the web be 1,2 or even 5 years from now?

    Nothing like anyone predicts.
  • Oh Dave, having suffered through a childhood of "Randall Burnings" I can't tell you how much I wish that were the scenario.

    But you are thinking of Ken O'Brien of the Jets (same green uni)... and the exact quote from LT was "Son, y'all GOT-ta do bettern' this!"

    I think I still have the old videotape lying around somewhere, it was called "LT, the Greatest Linebacker of All Time" or some such. I'm sure that scene is available on youtube as well...

    God I used to hate Randall Cunningham. Mofo would burn us at the last second EVERY time. (or so it seemed, when I was a kid).
  • Are you sure? I might have the quote wrong, but I could have sworn he was sitting on Randall's chest. I think it was from the NFL films Giants highlight film for the '86-'87 season. They had LT miked during a game against the Eagles.

    Randall made one of the greatest individual plays ever. You probably remember the one, where the defender knocked him down, but he broke his fall with one hand, popped up and completed the big pass.

    OK, what you're talking about with the Jets QB happens at 2.23 of this clip. I still think there was a similar scene with Randall. I could be wrong though.
  • Hold on a second... does this mean I should stop paying $30k a year to Forrester Research?

    (Oops! Apologies, was just borrowing Fly's Time Machine and had not realized I'd temporarily set it to 2001.)
  • Looking at your photo of LT, I can't help thinking of him sitting on Randall Cunningham's chest while shaking his head and saying, "Y'all gotta do better than that, Randall".
  • thunderous applause
  • This is a great article. I agree with people following hype, and believe that the value and innovation will come out of necessity.
  • thanks....yes
  • Speaking of the climate business, Australia's legislature just nixed their PM's cap & trade proposal. I think that's two strikes against it there. Bloomberg played a clip of Australia's treasurer worrying that Australia's economy would be hurt if it didn't enact cap & trade, because of foreign retaliation for Australia's carbon infraction. I thought: can it be that this guy doesn't know how vital coal exports are to his country? And can he really think that the Chinese will import less of it (and less iron ore) from Australia because cap & trade got shot down there?

    It's a tribute to the strength of Australia's economy that it succeeds despite that sort of thinking by the country's current leaders.
  • AUS is on the short-list....let's put it that way
  • I'm long one Aussie stock, a micro cap that's a picks & shovels play on global demand for iron ore, mainly, but it's tech has applications in other mined commodities and infrastructure.
  • "And hopefully, you realize that NO ONE is going to TELL you what is next….but that YOU are going to create what is next."

    Awesome.

    This is also why you're better off seeing what's getting cooked up in computer science depts at top universities in the country for insights about what's next rather than going to hyped up tech events. I remember watching a clip of Marc Andreesseen saying that's what he does at least.
  • Good point. Look at the tech being developed and draw your own conclusions
    of where YOU can take it. I like that a lot.
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