It's weird to me because so many of the commenters seem to take the author's point to be "no discipline ever" when she was actually talking about a very specific set of circumstances in which she considers discipline to be counter-productive. But almost nobody is engaging with that idea!
There was another starcraft mod called Golems Evolution that was almost an idle clicker, but you had to choose how to evolve your army. Would love something like that.
Speaking from experience... Degrees are not at all required in software engineering. Passion & skill are sought after in early career developers, and years of experience will suffice in more advanced engineers.
I'd say degrees from prestigious universities can still help you even in software engineering, even after experience should take precedence.
My sense is that's mainly true at companies where the founders/execs have prestigious degrees, and therefore put a lot of stock in them.
I think it's (unfortunately) quite helpful to these companies too, since appearances matter a lot. Telling a non-technical investor, prospect, or journalist "all our engineers are from Stanford/MIT/etc." will often impress them regardless of whether any of those engineers have a clue (something a non-technical person has no way to really evaluate).
But unless it's a household name university, I think you're right that it no longer matters at all.
It's also worth noting that someone who graduated from Stanford/MIT/etc has a lot of good options, and it's a huge vote of confidence that they chose to work for your startup
Launching a satellite is already sub $100k. Technology both miniaturizes and industrializes at an exponential rate. Think about how small and cheap computers have become in the span of a hundred years, from "occupies a building and costs a fortune" to "fits in your pocket and everyone can afford one". Sputnik 1, the first satellite ever launched cost 33 billion 1985 US dollars. 45 years later, you can get a cubesat into orbit for $100k.
I really don't think Sputnik cost more than the entire Apollo program, nor 8x the cost of the JWST. I can only find a couple of sites saying "33.000 million" for Sputnik's cost, unsourced.
That could be an EU/US issue. In the EU it is common to separate thousands (or millions) with dots, and decimals with commas. In the US it is the other way around. So those sources could be saying (or were read by GP) as 33 thousand million (33 billion) or it could mean 33 million and 0 thousands.
The billion sounds linguistically more correct, but I have no idea if those are inflation adjusted dollars or whatever. It could be an error that telephones around the internet as 33.0 million by the US system then converted to someone in the EU to 33.000 because they misread the number.
You can already make your own and get it launched if you have enough money. Cubesat components are pretty much off the shelf except the payload. And launch costs are to the tune of 30k per kg or so. I'm sure a lot of overhead / integration is added but it's financially possible for the well-off :)
> Have you considered some people actually ENJOY the work, leisure, convenience, busy-ness and thrill of fast paced modern life?
I wouldn't consider the modern system of wage-slavery to be a life of leisure, convenience, and certainly not enjoyable for the thrill of a fast paced modern-life. As the above commenter observed, the lifestyle of the modern worker is anything but leisurely and thrilling, rather, more reminiscent of the life of a caged bird. While this may not be true for the privileged, for millions of factory workers this is an everyday reality.
> Technology is as essential to utopia as milk is to milkshake. Your cynicism has destroyed your sense of LIFE!
My take on this is more similar to what the author of culture.io's manifesto wrote:
"To blindly reject technology is to reject an aspect of our humanity. To blindly embrace technology is similarly misguided. We should approach technology in the same way we approach any other human system: by evaluating how it supports or undermines individual well-being."
Technology aids the development of the utopia, but to simply accept all forms of technological development as beneficial for humanity is short-sighted. Indeed, in the words of the author, "The point is simply that we should always treat individuals as ends, never as means." If the utopia is not individual-centric, then it is no utopia at all. Therefore, if technological innovation comes at the cost of the livelihood and well-being of individuals, then we must reject it.
This, I think, was what the above commenter was communicating and what I agree with.
> I wouldn't consider the modern system of wage-slavery to be a life of leisure, convenience, and certainly not enjoyable for the thrill of a fast paced modern-life. As the above commenter observed, the lifestyle of the modern worker is anything but leisurely and thrilling, rather, more reminiscent of the life of a caged bird.
Being a farmer in the middle ages wasn't no picnic either. That's just the nature of work, I'm afraid, to the degree that it was even put into the story of Adam and Eve's banishment ("In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread").
