Like solving problems? Here are some really deep and big ones.

2 points

13 years ago

A lot of software developers are attracted to entrepreneurship because they like solving problems, and there are a lot of problems that need to be solved to get a new business off the ground. But there are other areas in addition to technology and business. Paul Graham wrote a bit about ambitious problems in this article: http://www.paulgraham.com/ambitious.html but they are still mainly technology related suggestions. How would you like to hack on the code that runs America? The rules and processes of governance itself. This Washington Post article outlines 13 areas in which governance itself is broken: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/07/the-13-reasons-washington-is-failing/

Each one of these is an opportunity to debug, and craft something better. Better yet, the rules and processes of governance are open source so anyone who is interested can get involved. It is obviously not easy, i.e. you can't just wave a better mousetrap around, but the democratic political system makes it possible for anyone with a good idea to publish it, to promote it, and perhaps ultimately, to see it accepted and implemented in Washington.

Silicon Valley (and its knockoffs) has a great concentration of intellectual power but too often, these people (us) entirely ignore politics as something that is distant and unimportant. But everyone loves a good bug that needs to be rooted out and now the Washington Post has given us the list of 13 issues that need solutions.