For the Internet, No More Innovation for the Fun of It

For the Internet, No More Innovation for the Fun of It:

For the Internet, No More Innovation for the Fun of It @ NYTimes.com.

I wouldn’t describe the car industry as fun. The airline industry isn’t fun either. Phone companies are far from fun. Yet these industries all started out fun. They began with tinkerers and innovators, just like, say, the Internet today…

…The Internet, with companies sniping at one another and blithely ignoring major privacy violations, is on the verge of the same fate as the true-blue American industries before it: losing its sense of fun.

…But for the technology companies that started out with this same goal to innovate and make things better for people, it seems as if the fate that befell the auto, airline and phone industries is destined to happen here, too. And that’s not much fun.

Do you know what’s still fun? Engineering A lot of EEs and programmers we know go in to banking and finance, or work for an ad-based social network/search engine, lots of cash, but they’re not having “fun”. If you’re considering any career right now, making open-source hardware, writing great code to help inspire & educate and running a business is incredibly fun. Maybe one day that will change, but for now – it’s fun