I've posted about this before- I live in South Africa. My domestic worker started playing Angry Birds last year with my then two-year old. It was a hook that got her into computers, something that intimidated her until then. She got a computer for her family back home. A door was opened that was until then shut.

Deciding what "matters" is a trickier than we think.

Angry birds falls under none of the criticisms people make of zynga's output. It's a honest-to-goodness, (relatively) original and fun game. People play it because they like it, not simply because they need the dopamine hit.

Eh, it's a grinding game with intentional randomness added on top of a low-skill base for Skinner-box purposes. It's not pay-to-win like Zynga games, but it is intentionally addictive to play.

> It's harsh, but whenever I see Zynga's stock dip even lower its reassuring due to the signal it sends to smart people: what you work on matters.

I don't follow your logic here.

You're implying that the work done at Zynga is non-important, or is some how bad.

But plenty of smart people work at "important" world changing places and never hit huge success.

Plenty of smart people work at "non-important" places and end up hitting it big (like most year-old startup being acqhired these days).

I don't know if the distinction is so much between "important" and "unimportant" as it is between "building games that amuse people" and "building games that function as electronic Skinner boxes."

I don't think it's so much "important" vs "non-important" as "regular business" and "evil". Zynga is known for spamming you with friends request, cheap gambling simulators such as *Ville, Mafia Wars (iirc), stealing from anyone they couldn't buy, etc. And lately their "offers" have been getting more and more gray, or so I heard.

My logic is that if you went to go work for Zynga and consciously ignored what you were working on (and the ethics therein) because of hopes for the big IPO exit, you are now left with no money and the last several years of your life spent on something you regret. I'm not making any statements about my opinion on Zynga, but based upon the press and popular opinion here, you can be sure there were engineers who turned a blind eye to what they were working on in hopes of striking it rich.

My point is that regardless of the monetary prospects, how you choose to spend your time matters, because the only certain thing is what you are working on now, not the payout in the future.

Companies doing "important" work have never gone out of business?

Of course not. Society is driven by the frivolous more than the things that will advance us as a culture or species. Modern society is pathetic and has forgotten how to chase dreams.

Or rather, their dreams are no longer grand and hard things, but weak things like becoming rich so that one can simply party it up.

edit: and obviously there are a still some who dream big, I'm talking about my impression of the average attitude out there. I hope I'm wrong.