Thursday 26 February 2009

The crack of The Naughties

First of all, I apologize for the title: I was exposed to this name—so awful it's almost good—for our current decade only last week and felt compelled to throw it in. And yes, I realize I'm a bit late coming to this party.

Paul Graham's latest post talks about the challenges of maintaining the culture of his Hacker News site [link withheld to protect the innocent - you should be able to find it]. What I found interesting, though, was this almost offhand comment right at the end:

I feel like the addictiveness of games and social applications is still a mostly unsolved problem. The situation now is like it was with crack in the 1980s: we've invented terribly addictive new things, and we haven't yet evolved ways to protect ourselves from them. We will eventually, and that's one of the problems I hope to focus on next.
A way to protect ourselves from the crack that is the internet... Wikipedia safe injection sites? What do you have in mind, Paul?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It is extremely interesting for me to read that article. Thanks for it. I like such topics and anything connected to this matter. BTW, why don't you change design :).