It is always very important to ask yourself about the meaning of some solution. The reason for it. Engineers too often like to solve some problem because they can. But is the problem really needed to be solved? Should there really be an app for it?

Morozov characterizes this impulse to fix everything as “solutionism,” and offers two broad challenges to the solutionist sensibility. First, solutionists often turn public problems into more bite-sized private ones. Instead of addressing obesity by regulating the content of food, for example, they offer apps that will ‘nudge’ people into better personal choices. Second, solutionists overlook the positive value in the ‘vices’ they seek to ‘cure.’

I like the thought that sometimes inefficiencies in the system have a purpose. Probably we should really be careful which inefficiencies we tackle and which we allow. Today we have means to remove many. But this does not mean that we should remove them all.

An interesting critique of crowdfunding.

If one actually paid a decent wage to all of the people involved in helping with the campaign, one would be loosing much of the money raised. The production costs of organizing a €10000 campaign will have already used up some of the funds for the project that is to be executed when funded. The actual costs of organizing, raising money and carrying out the campaign are therefore not funded. It is the people who actually do most of the work (the campaigner) who are not paid enough (if anything at all) and then only if the project is successful, i.e. if the amount of funding requested has been raised.