I don't think the One Click patent is the problem here. That one is at least clearly written and actually used by the company. It's the intentionally obfuscated and overly general patents that serve no practical purpose to the holder that bog the economy down.
We had the technology to detect planets for at least 80 years yet the first efforts started just 30 years ago. You know why? Because our star system model predicted that there are no planets that meet the condition to be detected by us (big, close to the star).
A model based on a sample of one system.
After people discovered a whole bunch of such planets, I thought that people would realize that they should not judge the universe based on just our solar system, but here it is all over again.
You've just described pretty much any economic transaction.
That's exactly my point. The poster I was responding to was portraying the sharing business as something new, something extraordinary that will ruin the world economy forever.
Nothing is being created.
But something is being used up. My car will break after 150 000 miles. If I ride it alone, it will take 10 years. If I share it/rent it out, it will happen in 4 years and I will have to get a new one sooner. Same goes for the furnishings and the paint in the room I share, the lawnmower, the sander and everything else that's being shared through these services.
Of course next you'll let us know how this is a political problem not a technical one, as if that makes any difference
Of course it does make a difference. 50 years ago, nobody thought we could produce enough food for double the world population without causing an ecological catastrophe like chopping down all the forests. Don't try to pretend that this 'technical' aspect is something you can just wave off as insignificant.
Buggy whip manufactury closed I would tell the workers - go work for Ford or GE or whoever, Underwood workers could go work for Olivetti, or in retail
Where are the current low skilled workers supposed to go? The time is coming where any job that does not need empathy or creativity can be done by a machine.
Now nobody here or in TFA is 'holding back progress' - so your pleading to stop doing it is going to fall on deaf ears.
But should we pretend there is no problem at all?
Then there's a list of big things that he did not see coming at all:
- the internet!
- computers thousand times stronger than anything in 1964 - the size of your palm - in everybody's pocket
- advances in medical science - stem cells, 3d printing of tissue etc. and in medical technology - scanners creating a 3d model of your body (including the inside)
- detection and photography of extrasolar planets
- a man made probe exiting the solar system
- despite the overpopulation, abundance of food for everybody
etc.
Those lazy Marmosets, lab rats, mice, and chimps! No wonder they're getting fat.
But they all are in fact getting less exercise then their wild counterparts. Plus a lot of them are bred to reinforce some specific traits like calmness. The more calm an animal, the less calories it burns (no running around, fidgeting etc.).
Somehow the author of TFA forgot about that
I once had to work in a team where everybody wanted to take the lead of the group. It sucked. It made all of the team members frustrated. It didn't help productivity either.
It was an HR management failure - failure to build a working team, to pick the right people to form a team.
So be careful when an employer is looking for a leader type. Are they looking for one in a leadership position or just as a regular team member? Do they seem to understand that an effective team cannot have many leaders?
To reply to the question though: Leadership is not really overvalued, but it's very often misused and misunderstood and its rather the just-doing-my-job type of person that is undervalued.
Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ?
