Why web 2.0 innovation is becomes more difficult the older you get....

I've been thinking lately that the hardest thing about innovation with web 2.0 tools these days is not related to age specifically. It is a function of the last finite resource in a world of ambient findability: attention.

College students are often early adopters of innovative technology because they have an excess of time and attention. The older a person gets the more their time is "value added" with job and family commitments. Time does not equal money. Time = value. To the extent that a person values their job, their family, their hobbies, their health, they will spend time on it. Once those habits of time investment are established, investing in a technology that was invented a few days or months ago seems foolish. Often it is foolish. But the power of Web 2.0 technology exceeds the printing press. This is why investing the time to explore and discover new technologies is ultimately worthwhile.

Web 2.0 is really just a new kind of city. It is millions of people who are opening themselves up for real human connection. Investing time in connecting with these people is very important, even if the means of that connection changes so often that it requires a seemingly excessive amount of time to do it.

This will mean a divestment of time in other things for those who have good and healthy habits of investment in other things. I have divested time spent watching TV. I watch very little TV anymore. It is boring, static and feels like a waste of time when compared with finding my friends and new ideas and technologies in a Web 2.0 world. I believe most people have a slice of time that could be reinvested in Web 2.0 that would improve their life far more than what they used to spend that time on.

Mercy

Ghost Cities Of 2100

Forbes.com: "In the U.S., towns in Kansas and the Dakotas face extinction mainly because of an exodus of young people. Some Kansas towns are fighting back by giving away free land, with mixed results.

But some bigger centers also face the risk of annihilation. Urban planners across Europe and North America are already grappling with what to do with 'shrinking cities.' After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, millions of residents of what had been East Germany moved west. More than a million apartments were simply abandoned.

In response, the German government sponsored the Shrinking Cities Project to study what is now a global phenomenon. The project has an exhibit on tour that examines shrinkage in Russia's Ivanovo, Leipzig in Germany, Manchester and Liverpool in Britain and Detroit in the U.S.

Whether these cities disappear entirely, of course, is an open question. Detroit's population has fallen by around a third since 1950 and now equals about 950,000. It is expected to shrink slowly but steadily until at least 2030; unemployment inside the city is more than 10%. (The suburbs around Detroit, meanwhile, are growing.) If trends hold, Detroit will be altered beyond recognition by 2100."