Beyond the three year mark

As my Class Viewer project quietly moved beyond the three year mark I started wondering more about how I see things now, especially going forward, versus what I thought might happen over three years ago when I was eagerly applying for a project at SourceForge. And I realized that my perspectives now were a lot about how I see the Internet itself differently.

And that picture is still changing like the Internet itself, where mostly I find myself doing a wait-and-see.

Other project ideas are lurking in my mind but most of them have to do with finding content, like one project idea I posted here a while back having to do with trying to figure out a way to get a good directory of web links where a computer manages, hiring and firing people to find links and judge them.

But I can't get beyond just initial thinking because part of me sees it as kind of a strange problem. Today there is so much information out there, but I find it so hard to find what I think is the really good stuff.

And I still don't quite know why. I have my ideas but until the situation makes sense to me, I'm not going to invest a lot of time and effort that might be wasted.

Looking back on the multi-year efforts that created the little app that is doing whatever it's doing as I'm not sure, I am more impressed than I was then with how much effort, time and single-minded purposefulness it takes.

I think I helped add to the good content that is out there and it's a nice feeling. But I feel more and more like it's so hard to rise above the thicket that you have to worry about that as much as coming up with a good idea.

The signal to noise ratio of the Internet is just so high. So much effort is not about having a good idea, but just about being seen.


James Harris