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Too Many Smart People Chasing Too Many Dumb Ideas?
theodp writes "In The Unexotic Underclass, C.Z. Nnaemeka argues that too many smart people are chasing too many dumb ideas. 'What is shameful,' writes Nnaemeka, 'is that in a country with so many problems, with such a heaving underclass, we find the so-called 'best and brightest,' the 20-and 30-somethings who emerge from the top American graduate and undergraduate programs, abandoning their former hangout, Wall Street, to pile into anti-problem entrepreneurship.' Nnaemeka adds, 'It just looks like we've shifted the malpractice from feeding the money machine to making inane, self-centric apps. Worse, is that the power players, institutional and individual — the highflying VCs, the entrepreneurship incubators, the top-ranked MBA programs, the accelerators, the universities, the business plan competitions have been complicit in this nonsense.' And while it may not get you invited to the White House, Nnaemeka advises entrepreneurs looking for ideas to 'consider looking beyond the city-centric, navel-gazing, youth-obsessed mainstream' and instead focus on some groups that no one else is helping."
Smart people aren't doing what I want them to!!! Why aren't they making the world better the way I think it should be done?!
Where does writing inane, self-centric books fit in Nnaemeka's weltanschlung?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
I think there are lots of smart people helping those that fewer people care about (there are no groups that need help that nobody does), you just don't hear about it because they don't get invited to the White House.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
the "best and brightest" will just go back to feed the money machine. After all, they are competent and they also need to eat when they`re bankrupt. VCs have money to spare and they will benefit either way.
This combination doesn`t exist: ETIs that know about humanity and want to see us dead. Otherwise we wouldn't exist.
The smart people don't really want to help the lower class. Ugh, have you actually met any of them? Shudder. If anything they should be vexed even more than they are already.
What the smart people want is to be seen as helping the lower class. This gives you fantastic social status (among other smart people, naturally) and ensures that you will be invited to all the right parties. The lower class will themselves not be attending these parties. Again, a five minute conversation with any of them is quite enough.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Everyone's so quick to attack, but he has a point. Whatever the cause, the tech industry seems to want its best and brightest to become toymakers. There are a lot a problems that could be helped by new tech, but none of that seems to be as glorious as working on the new iPhone, a better Google Maps, or the next hit app.
In the USA, it is all about credit (the ability to go into debt for the purpose of buying things) and what you have bought. When we see each other, we assess largely on what they are wearing, driving or have in their possession. Additionally, every time we hear about rich people in trouble or otherwise doing something stupid, we instictively react with "I thought they were [better than us]!!" It's not the presumption that they are just like anyone else and often times dumber, it's the opposite because we pedestrians have been taught to succeed we must be smart or skilled and to work hard. Interestingly, those are the characteristics which keep those "valuable human capital assets" in the trenches where they belong.
All the money circulates around consumerism. That is where the money is. That is what people study to join in to get a share of.
Yes, this is NOT a sustainable model. This is why we are in trouble now.
The author seems quite intent on blaming individuals for what is a structural malaise.
There's money in the kinds of fields the author talks about, and it seems a bit harsh to criticize people for trying to make a living. Agreed, Angry Birds isn't pushing the boundaries of human evolution towards a fairer, more peaceful world, but this isn't the 50's - the teet of government research is drying up through constant cuts and marginalisation. Academia and the public sector doesn't seem to have the clout it used to, and as a result long term humanitarian projects are dying off. The death of the public sector is the real reason we've never gone back to the moon. That's neoliberalism for you.
As for the "underclass" (a word I despise), I've been wondering recently whether we're witnessing the technological trend futurists warned us about; persistently lowering labour requirements. Figures certainly seem to point that way.
Outside of tech and Wall Street, making a living is quickly becoming harder and harder. There simply isn't the amount of work there was forty years ago. We're looking at genuine human tragedy if the situation is not resolved.
I feel the only cure is a guaranteed minimum income. Let us solve all these problems at once, forever.
the less fortunate is that you can't make any money off of them. Guys like Bill Gates, with all the money in the world, can afford to focus on that portion of the human population because they don't have to make money off of them. The rest of us have to eat and feed our families and send our kids to school.
Nnaemeka advises entrepreneurs looking for ideas to 'consider looking beyond the city-centric, navel-gazing, youth-obsessed mainstream' and instead focus on some groups that no one else is helping.
Mr. too-many-Ns: Smart people still need to eat. To put a roof over their heads. They may even hope to "get ahead" a bit, enjoy a life of reasonable comfort, and retire early with enough wealth to not end up a decrepit dependent of the state like most people.
Solving "important" problems doesn't accomplish those goals. Until you want to demonstrate the "importance" of your pet interests by paying me as much as industry does to work on inane, self-centric apps, GTFO.
That said - Come up with funding, and we can talk. Honestly, I believe virtually everyone would rather work on solving real problems than on building shoddy consumer crap to pad $CEO's bonus this quarter. But Einstein gots ta get paid, son.
From TFA: C.Z. Nnaemeka studied Philosophy at Wellesley; logically, she has spent most of her time in finance, beginning at Goldman Sachs. Born in Manhattan to Nigerian parents, she attended French schools, graduating from the Lycée FranÃais de New York. Since then she has alternated between writing, banking, and consulting to startups in Europe, Latin America, and Australia. Previously, she lived in Paris where she founded a political discussion group and was a foreign affairs commentator for the conservative newspaper, Le Figaro. She graduated from MIT in 2010, focusing on Entrepreneurship + Innovation.
Don't be stupid. If you don't bother to read, don't assume gender in your response.
I found this article courageous interesting, though it bogs down in examples it stands apart from a great many rants I see day after day.
The author is NOT just attacking "silly things"... but referring to a decline of interest in building, maintaining and improving physical infrastructure. That complacency is real, it is dangerous and ultimately fatal.
Physical infrastructure is the entirety of things that make a comfortable existence possible. Safe drinking water and the system that delivers it, affordable electricity, sufficient food with variety and the global transportation and trade that make them affordable.
The desire to deliver a modern comfortable standard of living, through innovation in the building of infrastructure, is a moral imperative. As things stand we do not seem to be equipped or even interested to deliver these things. Before long we might not even be able to deliver Frito-Lay products.
The United States is losing ground on these things because in great part, we have diverted from the path that leads to total self-sufficiency for energy. Energy is a key to all of this. Anyone who runs the numbers on wind power should realize it is a crap solution. An obscene amount of investment capital has and is being spent on it. And too many people (including these 20 and 30-somethings unfairly singled out in the article) are brushing across lone voices in the wilderness suggesting a directed focus to solve this problem and thinking maybe, gee that's interesting... and moving on... not feeling that there is any kind of existential threat.
Rumors of the planet melting and sea levels inundating the shore have been greatly exaggerated. This is part of the problem, for some of the dumbest ideas ever conceived have arisen from it. And some of the smartest ideas for providing us with enough baseload energy to --- among other things --- heal the planet or offset our impact (yes it takes additional energy!) have gone unheard.
It's time to "grow up" a little, and take some time to set in motion certain real-life initiatives that will tip the balance to lock in this modern way of life, until it is really sustainable.
Then back to the fun and games.
In other words, clean your room.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I realize this is a troll, but there is some truth to this... SOME.
Smart people do not have children they can't raise in a good healthy environment and can't properly give them all the things they need as they grow and graduate into adulthood.
Unfortunately, we have far too many non-smart people. Both rich and poor, they have children they can't or won't care for. Both end up spoiled and neglected and this has been going on for 2-3 generations now. Under these conditions, the results are more than predictable. And the poor become a drain on society.
Now if this notion were followed through and actually happened? Well, that'd be another problem entirely. We need a middle class and we don't have one. The rich send our jobs everywhere else but here and they are slowly running out of people they can sell their crap to. Do you know how poor people are getting their cell phones now? Government subsidized service. Seriously. Welfare mobile phones. And of course they are on welfare everything else as well.
Most of us here on slashdot don't really know what it's like to be poor and on welfare. I've had unfortunate times, though, and I know it all too well. To me it was a nightmare, but most of them were extremely comfortable in their misery. Extremely comfortable.
Shit lost a healthy balance long ago. There is no limit on greed and no limit on laziness. Why there is a dwindling middle-class is partly because they have lowered the measure of what middle-class is and largely because of wealth distribution problems. Like global warming, I think we've gone too far already.
"we live in interesting times."
There are plenty of capital "investments". Take the State I live in as an example. Continental Tire is spending more than half a billion dollars on a new tire plant, while Michelin and Bridgestone are expanding theirs. BMW exports SUVs to mainland China! Infrastructure investments are being made so the port of Charleston can handle greater traffic from these and other domestic businesses.
The main barrier to marketing "new ideas" is that we have all the basics and most luxuries covered! There is almost nothing American consumers "need" that they don't already have.
The main barrier to more employment is high productivity. You don't need meatsacks running manual production machinery when fewer meatsacks can produce vastly more product supporting machining centers and other automated production equipment.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
You mean companies are hiring smart people to design what other people want to buy?
Oh, the humanity! The humanity!
Infuriate left and right
People who went to university are not smart. They have some more education, and some of them are even brilliant in their distinct field, but beside that, they are morons like everyone else. If you want to help the lower and middle classes, first, you have to provide a decent social security system, like Danmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and similar countries. Second, you have to train people in a way so that they can find a purpose in life. That purpose is more important, than above minimal-income income. Third, there are people who really are not able to decide what they want in life. They need guidance. SO we as a society have to deliver that. But most prominently, we have to change the primary attitude in society or at least in economy: ME FIRST!
Where have you been the last X years, when was the last time you saw something truely original or innovative?
NOTE: Windows 8 doesn't count.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I'd expect nothing less from a 1st world culture in general that says "do what YOU want to do," "find YOUR dream," "YOU're the most important to YOU." Reading the comments on this thread so far, it is evident that we'd rather remain blissfully ignorant and shift the burden elsewhere.
It's gruelling work to sort out the world's problems, and with no one-right-answer, fraught with the possibility of failure, as some commenters here can attest: one commenter demonstrates the core attitudinal problem - it takes effort to connect with someone from a different social background, with different concerns, priorities and fears for continued livelihood, to try and understand the problem, and formulate some answer, ANY answer, but at least to give a damn and TRY; some of us just aren't up to the task (though we can't necessarily be blamed for that much so long as we're not in denial). It's much easier to cater to the quick-wins, the plugged-in smart-phone-wielding, TV-watching, internet-addicted, money-squandering market and keep them happy. Fast money, cheap glory.
The first commenters demonstate the very sentiment under fire, that rather than recognizing that there are much more worthwhile questions to ponder than how to make the next best cheap app on the most expensive phones to date, or how to make their privileged lives even more privileged, they prefer to suggest that Nnaemeka is the whiny my-problems-aren't-solved person. Thing is, privileged netizen, YOUR problems ARE being solved.
Thankfully I too know the kind of people "O('_')O_Bush" points out, those who are toiling away, and even setting up locally successful ventures, to make communities, environments and the Environment better; though it's either an uneven distribution, in terms of attention gained vs actual work being done and achievements being made. I suspect we all know some such people. But we'd rather comment on the "celebrities" than focus on the great things happening on our own street.
We've riled as the 99% against the 1% and the sheer injustice of it all, but we forget that we're still part of the upper 20% that are still quite plumply sitting on another lowly 80%. We are the 20%, and we are unashamed.
-- "Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability." --Dijkstra
I think her point is exactly that these are problems that are "social and political in nature," and that our brightest minds are mostly writing inane apps instead of tackling them. Software solutions would help solve many of them but, as she says, doing that work is hard and doesn't offer much of an opportunity to strike it rich.
just like everyone else, people with degrees are chasing jobs. Just an electrician or a plumber who has to take a job where their skills lie, so do graduates out of top schools. I hate to say this, but they need to make a living too.
So this entire article is like an article saying "too many skilled workers are working at wal-mart".
Also, when you talk about solving either social or political problems as a nerd with the only social status you have is dependant on whatever patronism you give to established players, and as little as they can give you, and they are always looking take it away, how are we expected to solve problems.
What do you think happens to the first nerd who solves a problem that someone in washington, or big business uses to either make money, or stay elected, or get them whatever extra-legal favors they want?
Don't blame us, blame pop culture, and the social latter, which has the best and brightest subserviant to the worst and dumbest.
I also like how the article has a bit of remorse for how they "use to shovel money for wall street", because I think what is going on now is still a vast improvement.
Not really relevant to the topic; just wanted to point this out since a lot of people are referring to the author as "he".
Visit the
Minecraft
Smart Phones
Self Driving Cars
Private space flight
Crowd funding
Growing body parts from stem cells
Mars exploration
Discovery of planets around other stars
I wonder how boring a life would be to not recognize these things as new and wonderful.
I developed a very serious mobile app back way in the mid-90s for public health and disease surveillance. Let me tell you from experience why an app that people rely upon every day for critical work is no way to strike it rich. People *need* a lot of support for that kind of app. Support equals labor, and labor is expensive. Businesses with high expenses don't get rich unless they can command huge prices.
When smartphones came along, my partner used to gnash his teeth at stories of developers scoring windfalls with ringtones or stupid little games, and here we were doing *important* work and only making an OK living. I pointed out that if somebody pays $1.99 for something to amuse himself, he's never going to call tech support. When something represents a total investment of fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in hardware, software and system integration services, he damn well is going to call tech support. But 50K isn't really that much money if you include hardware, third party software licenses, QC'ing the client's existing data and converting it, training the administrators and end uses, and negotiating with IT gatekeepers. That's what you have to face when you do work that everyone agrees is important. Yes, people are willing to spend real money on important problems, but they also subject you to higher standards, intense scrutiny, and exacting ongoing demands, and those things eat into your profits. And the only way to get rich in business is to generate profits -- and salary you pay yourself for your labor IS AN EXPENSE.
That's why the $1.99 app somebody buys on a whim to amuse himself is bound to be more profitable than *important* software that somebody relies on to do something important -- no matter how much you charge for that software. There are exceptions to this rule, of course. Software that is a cheaper, more convenient alternative to something someone already has (e.g. Skype) is practical because what it does may be important, but that software itself is at first dispensable.
Look at the vast amounts of cash going into develop "social media"; it is no accident that most of it goes to support is so trivia. Trivia is profitable. It's easier to try radical new things in the trivial. A lot more people have an early adopter stance towards a service like Facebook than they do to towards things they regard as critical. They take convincing and hand-holding. That's why something like Google Wave couldn't get off the ground, you have to approach something as important as collaboration much more conservatively, usually working around how people already do things (e.g. Sharepoint).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It does? In what way does evolution show that she's wrong? I don't think evolution is what you think it is....
People who will change society by orders of magnitude a few decades or centuries down the road are considered borderline insane today.
Actually, by the usual measure they often _are_ borderline insane. RMS is a great example. His ragging on about GNU/Linux instead of Linux etc., his appalling table manners (I've heard first hand that they are bound to make you throw up), etc. are mannerisms that cloud the greatness of the ideals he holds dearest. His deed of introducing the GPL and putting is power where his mouth is ang giving us the GPL and the GNU Toolkit will have more positive consequences for humanity further down the road than a Mark Zuckerberg could only dream of. And every expert knows this.
It's quite common that people really helping humanity move forward become famous only after they've died - if at all - and society gradually grows to see what they did for us all or what they saw coming (Ada Livingston, Tesla, ...). And if they do experience fame themselves, it's not unlikely that they are in trouble for their ideas and insights (Galilei, US founding fathers, founders of the German republic, etc.). ...
That all been said, I have to second the initial claim that there basically is a solid measure of decadence, especially in the field of IT, that is leading us nowhere. I've spent my recent years scrum mastering for browsergames, fiddling with FOSS CMSes (and we all agree that the world surely does not need any more of those) and now techleading the development of travel booking sites. With all the power as a developer and IT expert at my hands today nothing to brag about, really.
However, I *do* have a daughter and she needs to be put well on her way, and if assigning tickets to webdevs for the next generic webapp is what helps me follow through with my responsibility, I guess I'll have to swallow my pride until she's out of the house and on her own. Then I might actually finally drop IT as a main career all together and put my skills into action for some greater cause, such as protecting/defending the environment or pushing for some advancement in womans rights somewhere or something.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
There are an awful lot of people who are homeless because the bank took their houses away, not because they're junkies or winos who live in the street. The annual Seattle census of homeless people for the last several years has found that the number of people living in their cars in the suburbs, away from the stereotypical urban shelter residents, has been rising dramatically.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
The simple answer to all of this is choice, and the consequences of choice. I consider myself one of the "best and brightest" and why don't I go out and do what author is describing? Simple, myself subscribed to the philosophy that I needed to make a decent living (aka, I made a choice to live comfortably). I then chose to have a child with a woman who eventually split with me. I chose to get full custody of my son. Based on those choices, I was then told by society (a judge) that I had to live in central Indiana, and not in Washington, if I was to have my son live with me. Now Tell me how I can sit here with all those choices, and tell me how my life is going to work out.
I cannot work on the coasts, I cannot travel, I have to be home every night at 5-6pm, I want to live comfortably, I have to work in central Indiana. Tell me what a highly intelligent person is to do if they want to "change the world" or "help the underprivileged". Straw men such as the original author stated only work when things can work out for the person doing the work's favor.
Lets go with another example. Smart person wants to do a company which helps people. Great. They need money. They go out and they have to get into bed with VC or some angel will give them money for costs. This is great until said money giver now wants a return or worse yet, profit. So they have to find a way to make money. Giving things away does not make money (as poor, disadvantaged don't have a lot of excess cash to pay for things). So that means, companies who have altruistic intentions, must create a marketable application/device/item/widget and then sell that, make money, pay back the original shareholders, pay expenses/taxes, invest in R/D, and then finally with what ever is left, give money away for the original altruistic intentions were to begin with.
I cannot stamp my feet in the street and say "I want millions of dollars to create a company to help poor people, with no chance of paying back the original investors." The only way I can see that is if you hit the lottery.
The author has a point. A shorter version is from Jeff Hammerbacher at Facebook: "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." I've been to venture capital presentations, and too many of them are for incredibly banal applications. I've heard a pitch for a social network for cats. (It wasn't funded.) Even venture capitalists are unhappy with this situation.
As the social networking boom collapses (Facebook traffic and ad revenue peaked a year ago, and everybody else is in worse shape) we'll see a change in that. But it's not clear what comes next.
1. Many homeless people in the USA are homeless because of mental problems. Treating said problems is necessary because otherwise they can't take care of themselves, fancy rolling shelter or not. Many will DESTROY said shelter in days, if not hours.
It's not very brilliant, but it's a matter of law that both drug abusers and the mentally ill have a right to refuse treatment, and unless you can pin a sufficient criminal act on the former, or demonstrate a danger to society of the latter, then there's no way to force treatment.
It's also one thing to take a mentally ill person and medicate them to the point that they are stable enough that you are required to release them, and entirely another to implant them with a Norplant-type device to continue to administer corrective drugs after they've been released from protective custody. The second one is illegal enforcement of treatment after termination of medical power of attorney.
How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? One. But the lightbulb has to want to change.
Any smart person who is not also a strong idealist is most likely going to go where the money is. This could be on Wall Street, in online advertising, in going to the Moon, or in curing cancer. It is not their responsibility to do something to better the world. The people spending their money in the economy and electing officials who directly or indirectly decide where the money is going to go.
All this talk about training more people in STEM misses the entire benefit of being in a capitalistic economy. Instead of funding schools, fund research. Students will throw money at engineering programs like they current throw money at law schools to get at that research funding. People don't go into MBA programs or law school because the classes or fun or because sitting in board rooms is fun. They do it because of the money at the end of the tunnel. You put that same amount of money at the end of the tunnel for engineering, and capitalism with fix everything for us.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The problems of poor education and inefficient military bureaucracy are not solvable by a clever program or a nifty piece of hardware. Entrepreneurship is not a welcome trait in many facets of our society. These are deep cultural differences.
Solving these types of problems takes a lot more than 2-3 years of work, no matter how inspired it may be. The young people getting into civil service today have 10 years before they're going to be able to make changes. It's going to take patience, stubbornness and a superhuman resistance to cynicism for these young staffers and bureaucrats to solve these problems.