Life & Scalability

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, famously predicted that computer chips would grow exponentially, doubling the amount of transistors they could hold every two years. He was right, but having been in the web 2.0 game for (approx)three months, I’m starting to realize that the promises of better/faster/larger memory are not very impressive anymore; it’s more time I need. “Speed” is no longer a question of my computer, but an inward struggle with myself. And if there’s a start-up somewhere in California that’s working on adding more hours to the day, I certainly haven’t been told about it.

Twitter recently seems to have become a soapbox for the tired, red-eyed geeks to complain about the content they increasingly seem to be inundated with. All day I hear (read) cries of “300 emails down, 200 more to go” or “Just got too tired and told Google to ‘mark all as read’” and, of course, “sorry @_________ shutting off/unsubscribing from/unfriending you. It’s just too much “. Indeed, it is too much. On Twitter itself, it’s become perfectly acceptable to leave an @ reply unanswered, as we all understand that no one, be they an A-list blogger or a newbie, can keep up with every reply. Personally, I’m unable to accustom myself to a practice that, in the real world, would be just plain rude and find myself monitoring Twitter.mobile on the walk to work, on the checkout line at lunch and, sadly, as soon as I get home at night. Computing isn’t a hobby anymore, it’s a lifestyle.

And it’s not just content we have to swim through, now there’s also “friends” to worry about. Robert Scoble (who’s linkblog I’m subscribed to: see everything above) famously hit Facebook’s 5000 friend limit and has recently revealed that he is not alone in this milestone, that thousands have hit the limit (now, can you see why Facebook is worth $15 billion?), in fact, he told me in his comments that the poor folks at Facebook have even come up with a name for these people: whales.

But whales can at-least swim. I’m drowning.