Crazy New Ideas
Lots of comments already, but I&#x27;ll chime on in.<p>I realized this very late in life, but I have a test for when it&#x27;s time to pay attention to a new technology. It&#x27;s when technical people look at what seems like a groundbreaking idea, seem unimpressed, and say &quot;couldn&#x27;t you just _____&quot;, were the blank is filled with something a nontechnical person doesn&#x27;t understand or considers very cumbersome.<p>The web: couldn&#x27;t you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it?<p>Blogs: couldn&#x27;t you just update a web page?<p>Wikis: couldn&#x27;t you just update a web page?<p>social media: couldn&#x27;t you just set up group view preferences and use RSS?<p>youtube: couldn&#x27;t you just upload a video and use tags for search?<p>twitter: couldn&#x27;t you just not? Isn&#x27;t that just a worse version of what we can already do??<p>Honestly, I&#x27;ve overlooked almost every one of these things, because I failed to understand how removing small bits of friction can cause a technology to explode.<p>Sure, some ideas are crazy new, but some sound too underwhelming to be revolutionary. but they are, there&#x27;s no question about it, all those things I listed above changed the world, in ways both good and pretty damn awful.