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The Almighty Buck The Internet Technology

Open and Rich Co-exist But Don't Mingle So Much (scripting.com) 75

Posted by msmash from the technology-and-money dept.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Ev Williams, best known for co-founding Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, says the web is about money now -- and not creativity. According to him, the burst of creativity has repeatedly been followed by big companies showing up and locking it down. From the article: But the thing about dreaming up a future, and making it real, is then you have to live in it. Back in San Francisco, coming out of the BART station on Market Street, he admits that the web game has changed since he came up. [Editor's note: he is talking about web services that allow you to book a taxi with an app, pay for stuff you purchase with your phone]. "There were always ecommerce startups," he says. "I was never part of that world, and we kind of looked down on them when the whole boom was happening. We were creating businesses, but ours had more creativity, ours weren't just for the money. Or maybe ours were even for utility but not just money, whereas clearly there are ways for both." He laughs. "Even the Google guys -- they were trying to create something really useful and good for the world, and they made all the money." Software developer and writer Dave Winer disagrees. He believes that not all technologies are money-driven -- at least when you look at it from a different perspective. He writes: The fun is over. Now it's about money. I guess that's what you see from his perspective. And from Facebook, Apple and Google, and maybe Oracle and Salesforce, and a few others. But there are technologies that went a different way. My favorite example is Manhattan's relationship to Central Park. The apartment buildings around the park are the money, and the creativity is in the park. The buildings are exclusive, the most expensive real estate in the world. The park is open to anyone, rich or poor, from anywhere in the world. The park is the engine of renewal. It's where the new stuff comes from. The buildings are where the money is parked. In the interview Williams did with the Atlantic, in NYC, they looked into the park from a nearby hotel. That's one valid perspective of course. Or you could go for a walk and see wha''s happening inside the park. You can see a great concert at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, but there's great music in the park too. It's different. But it's good music. And the price is right.
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Open and Rich Co-exist But Don't Mingle So Much More

Open and Rich Co-exist But Don't Mingle So Much

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  • It was different in my day... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday June 18, 2016 @11:39PM (#52345605)

    That's what they always claim, anyway. Your motivation was always more pure than that of the money grubbers that came afterward.

    • I remember computers back in the 80's being all about the money. And before that, televisions and radio before that. Piano's used to be a big thing before radio's and every house had one. At least houses of the rich people. The poor had to be content with spoons washboards and empty moonshine jugs. Oh, how things are the same but with more electricity.

      As an aside, I was watching an interview with Daniel Ash today bemoaning the fact that they were popular, but never made much money, it was all about the mon

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Piano's used to be a big thing before radio's

        Before that, it was apostrophe's.

    • Normally when a new idea gets made it is often in the "safe" environment of a college of university. Where the students are really there for learning, and for the most part all their living needs are met. They are allowed to make mistakes, and for every one excellent idea product they are thousands of failures. But that isn't so bad, because if you failed then you still have the learning experience.
      However when you leave the college and need to face having to paying off college, car, housing. If you have

      • Normally when a new idea gets made it is often in the "safe" environment of a college of university. Where the students are really there for learning, and for the most part all their living needs are met. They are allowed to make mistakes, and for every one excellent idea product they are thousands of failures. But that isn't so bad, because if you failed then you still have the learning experience.

        I work at the University of Washington, and I'm not sure the world you describe exists anymore. I see faculty eager to personally monetize their publicly-funded (via grants, etc.) research; a university always ready to sue to protect their IP; and a PR environment which pays much more attention to students who've developed business plans than to those who are learning for the love of it.

        I think students may indeed come in full of curiosity, and that there are some faculty who still are primarily driven by t

    • Re:It was different in my day... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Archtech ( 159117 ) on Sunday June 19, 2016 @08:40AM (#52346563)

      Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues who invented and developed the Web took the deliberate decision to give it away to the world, free of charge or any encumbrance. This was partly because they believed its growth would be limited if it were proprietary or if it cost anything. Instead, they sacrificed what could have been many billions of dollars - why would Bill Gates or any of the leaders of Microsoft, for example, be rewarded any more generously than those who gave the world the Web? Although the Internet (and before it the ARPAnet) existed for decades before the Web, it never became a mass medium. First the Web made the Internet accessible and easily usable, and then Web browsers and protocol stacks became available for Windows. The combination of Windows and the Web transformed the world, and today it is very hard to say which is more important or plays a bigger role. Personally, I would choose the Web, as I use Linux to access it and so I don't need Windows. But there is no alternative to the Web.

      So I resent and strongly reject any suggestions that the Web was a money-making project. Quite the opposite is the case.

      • People seem to have forgotten that the Internet was originally called ARPANET [wikipedia.org]. The research was funded by the U.S. government, for use by the U.S. government (and military). It was never any sort of humanitarian project to connect the world and allow the sharing of ideas and allow people to freely communicate or any such blue-sky, egalitarian concept. All that stuff came much, much later on, and for a while, there was a 'Golden Age' of the Internet, before the corporations really got their hooks into it, wh

        • People seem to have forgotten that the Internet was originally called ARPANET [wikipedia.org].

          People seem to have forgotten that I mentioned that in my comment, to which you were replying. As for your dire predictions, they sound plausible. But remember John Kenneth Galbraith's warning about predictions:

          "There are two kinds of forecasters. Those who don't know what's going to happen, and those who don't know they don't know what's going to happen".

          For instance, the Internet and the Web may be doomed to proprietary lock-in in the USA, as you say. But that leaves 95% of the world's population, who liv

          • See, I don't claim to know anything. We're all just a bunch of random dudes on a more-or-less anonymous internet discussion forum voicing our opinions. For all I know there'll be a revolution and the Internet will experience a second Golden Age. Or maybe it'll all go to corporate hell, and Internet 2.0 will spring up via Onion Routing or the Deep Web, and a new Golden Age will exist there, free of corporate interference. Or for all anyone knows, the Internet will become such bureaucratic crap all over the w

    • I liked it before it was lucrative.

  • Right. It was always about the money. Always.

    Even if you thought otherwise, I'm sure the other businesspeople in your company were in it for the money.

    You didn't got to SF to be poor, right?

  • Captain Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Sunday June 19, 2016 @12:01AM (#52345649) Journal

    Ev Williams, best known for co-founding Blogger, Twitter, and Medium, says the web is about money now -- and not creativity.

    This has been the week for tech legends proclaiming stuff that's been going on for over a decade.

    Show of hands: Who didn't know it would end up exactly like this as soon as they started monetizing the Web?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Show of hands: Who didn't know it would end up exactly like this as soon as they started monetizing the Web?

      Probably everyone working on the web. Remember: it's an industry of kids. When your gem turns black, they toss you out on your ass. It's also the reason why they reinvent the wheel every six months and pat themselves on the back for their groundbreaking work.

    • Re:Captain Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lucm ( 889690 ) on Sunday June 19, 2016 @02:37AM (#52345911)

      That guy is something else. He subsidized the development of twitter using the money he made with blogger, then kept a backstabbing buffoon on the twitter board because he didn't want to hurt his feeling - only to end up kicked out of his own company by the said buffoon who orchestrated a coup.

      And then instead of just bitching and moaning about the situation, he went and created medium.

      I'll always pay attention when that guy has something to say.

    • Considering that everyone on Slashdot agrees with this deep insight, it must be the case that we all took economic advantage of the situation and are now all exceedingly rich.

      I know that I am fabulously wealthy and have multiple houses in expensive locations and can go anywhere and do anything I want, which is why I spend time on Slashdot instead of going to incredibly trendy locations with the other beautiful people.

    • Re: Captain Obvious (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This just in - techno hipster suddenly realizes that businesses don't survive unless they make money. "New economy" stunned... "Who would have thought that paying people so that they can buy groceries would have been such a 'thing' in the business world?" Exclaim self proclaimed heralds of techno grooviness.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Archtech ( 159117 )

      Everything gets monetized, and thus spoiled, in due course. Take something about as far from the Web or computing as you can imagine: athletics (in the sense of "track and field"). When I was young, I followed athletics religiously and I recall reading Herb Elliott's book "The Golden Mile" which was published in 1960, immediately after he won the Olympic 1500 metres in a new world record time. Elliott told, among other things, how he was nearly disqualified for "professionalism" after he was quoted speaking

      • Money is a universal solvent. There is hardly any human value that it cannot corrode and, given enough time, dissolve.

        Well put. I would change it to, "a love of money is a universal solvent". but the idea is the same. Commerce is necessary, but should not be the goal of all human endeavor.

        • I have no difficulty accepting your wording, but I submit that it's purely a linguistic change. If human beings did not overwhelmingly love money, it would not be a universal solvent. And if rubber could resist hydrochloric acid, it would be a suitable material for making containers for hydrochloric acid. But it isn't.

  • What do you expect? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People are usually at their worst when interacting on the web so how can you expect anyone to put their heart and soul into web content creation. You either embrace the snark full on ala fark.com or it eventually becomes just another way to earn a buck, and nobody knows the ins and outs of turning a quick buck like big business.
  • The sooner greed is outlawed the better. But it wont happen. Greed until the end. *TruthBait*

  • Back in the 90's it was nerds that had some great ideas & skills, not so much on business. Some monetized (lucky ones), some didn't (most).

    In the 00's the kids got smart .... saw the sole enabler was the VCs, so they ALL when back to school and got their MBAs or teamed up with MBAs. Wall Street got burned (2001), but they learned there lesson and now manipulate the boom-busts... and even doing reality "shows" (Shark Tank, TechCrunch, Kickstarter, even the kids are getting into it with their national co

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Funny how that works though. Everyone is expected to excel at business or they supposedly deserve to not make any money. We don't expect VCs to excel at auto mechanics, carpentry or IT. We don't claim that people deserve their flooded basement if they didn't learn plumbing along with their chosen profession.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Reminds me of ~2000 when I worked a project that was overdue, and our PM came in and handed each engineering team lead a binder with cost information. She was expecting us to manage our teams financials. I spoke up, saying we all went to engineering school, and wouldn't it be less expensive to pay a business analyst to track all of us. The famous quote from our CEO was "Cash is king". We evolved from a fun engineering company to one that worried about quarterly results.

  • Some of us don't care about money, but rather about making the world a more fun place to live in. We enjoy hanging out with the accidentally rich way more than the intentionally rich.

  • It's always about money (Score:3)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Sunday June 19, 2016 @02:35AM (#52345903) Homepage

    Reading that, I can't help but feel it's more about some dude writing about his own disillusionment as apposed to society's.

    It's always about money, it's always about the economy. *ALWAYS*. VCs let you pretend otherwise for a little while, but ultimately you either a) start making money or b) go out of business.

    Economy, or greed, rules.

    • It's always about money, it's always about the economy. *ALWAYS*. VCs let you pretend otherwise for a little while, but ultimately you either a) start making money or b) go out of business.

      Yes and no.

      Yes, you have to make money or you'll be out of business. That is completely obvious... and it's a good thing in nearly all cases. Money is our proxy for utility. If what you're building isn't useful enough to enough people that it can generate revenue in excess of costs, it's probably something we shouldn't bother with. There are exceptions, of course, which is why there are charitable organizations, government funding, etc., but to a first order approximation, stuff that can't be profitable p

  • The poor, hungry artists and students are usually hot and, well turn a trick for a rich person and there is an income. That's our equitable society in action.

  • True... (Score:3)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Sunday June 19, 2016 @09:05AM (#52346617) Homepage

    I was here when the internet started, I saw how it was a wild west of creativity and innovation... and I watched the assholes lock it all down and squash it by lobbying for patents and copyrights on things they should never be allowed to have.

    3d printing right now is that same wild west, so if you want creativity go there before the assholes discover that they are not squeezing every penny out of that and shut that down too.

  • Wise Man Say (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” -- Eric Hoffer

    The web is clearly at Stage 3.

  • Capitalism isn't about creativity, so why would anything associated with capitalism that is on the internet be about creativity? Capitalism lets artists starve except for the very best, and then what you have left isn't very creative because it was usually designed specifically for profit.

  • Expel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org] from your country since http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10... [pnas.org]

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