September, 2009
Does your software solve a real problem? Are you bettering lives? Creating jobs? Changing the world in some small manner? Easing some pain? Giving someone a tool that makes their job easier? Creating value? Futhering science? Helping people? Or is your software bringing about Huxley’s distopian future?
I was excited to see the annoucement of Mint’s sale to Intiut this past week because I think they’ve created a fantastic piece of software and are very deserving of this success. The best part though is that Mint has created something that is truely useful and solves a real problem for many people. It isn’t just another social networking engine or advertizing platform (although they have uniquely used advertising to support their business model). We need more small companies like this that are innovating across all manner of industries and we need people to tell us about these small companies and champion them to the rest of the world.
What we don’t need is another way to socially connect online. We don’t need more video games or devices that play video games better (cough.. Apple). There is nothing wrong with these things - everything in moderation is fine. The problem is that the social networking platforms, and the vast array of games are taking over a huge amount of time and attention while really providing very little value to us as humans. Sure, there are always exceptions; break throughs in these areas that go on to have applications in the rest of the world. But what if we took all this time and attention and solved some real issues? What if we looked outside our insatiable goal of being personally entertained and turned instead to any number of organizations that are working for change in the world. Not only do we have a growing population of people who spend more time playing World of Warcraft than they do sleeping, we also have a growing population of people who’s entire job it is to develop the next WoW or the next version of WoW so that more people might spend a large number of hours interacting in a virtual world. Doesn’t that seem like a waste?
If you do have a worthy cause that you are working towards, a problem that you are solving for the world, then by all means use the social networking tools to tell us about it. Otherwise, I say unplug from the matrix and live in the real world for a little while. Find a real problem to solve and then dive back in.
