I am. Having read
this article intensified my guilt. Aren’t there enough web mashups already? Do you really need to create yet another social network? Web entrepreneurs today are so hallucinated by their own culture that they have forgotten that there is a whole range of important problems to be solved for which the internet is not necessarily the panacea.
I am not suggesting that what they are doing is wrong. In fact, they are making best use of what they know. They are making cool virtual pets simulations, social networks for cats, amazing google maps mashups and a ton of amazing applications which really have potential to revolutionize the world. Imagine, how the world would be transformed if all the cats in the world could actually communicate over the internet. But – here comes the reality – apart from a (very) few cases (read Facebook, Youtube, etc.) the potential for these web apps never seems to be realized. Millions of such useless apps hopelessly float around the web, waiting for someone to discover and use them.
All these web programmers, on the other hand, could devote their time to what world really wants. The world does not want their trivial apps. The world wants its problems of hunger, poverty, thirst, freedom and happiness to be solved. The world wants to prevent millions of children who die everyday due to preventable causes. The world wants to break the vicious cycle of poor nations. The world wants to get better.
Having realized that I have wasted so much making futile web apps that nobody really cares about, I really want to change the world. It might sound naive but that’s where the fun lies. Only the true naive can innovate and invent new business models that solves world’s pressing problems.
So, world, here I come!