the problem not the solution - jmfayard/drafts GitHub Wiki

Don't Fall in Love with a Solution. Fall in Love with a Problem!

@Keff has a fascinating simple remark

I've been around blockchain and decentralized systems since early 2016. Professionally and in my spare time, and I have never found any project I could say: "Yes, this is useful and could not be done without this tech" or "This tech makes the project that much better"...

You can read the comments here if you want to live on the Blockchain, but I want to make a larger point.

The technical term for what he describes here is a solution in search of a problem.

Which is often fascinating for tech people, also most of the time a terrible idea.

In the early 2000s, tech people saw that Napster was super successfull, and they thought what was incredible about it is that it was Peer To Peer. Now they want to P2P everything with as much energy as their colleagues want to put feelings and water on the blockchain today. What an exciting technical challenge!

What they forgot is that what the people liked in Napster what that you had a search box where you could enter a song name, and then a play button that would play the music. And music is a big deal. Life without music would be an mistake.

P2P? Not really. Today people are just as happy, or more happy to listen to music without the P2P aspect. Spotify and YouTube music have the search box and the play button. The impressive Napster successors on the other hand went nowhere.