At least "solar roadways" has a clear purpose/need. Twitter and Facebook were/are almost completely frivolous, and only because of success have they become part of the business fabric in the US and around the world. The idea what these two services succeeded and are so "valuable" is indeed pretty radical.
Your profile lists an icq #, an email address, and a twitter handle....
You don't think there's value to networking social connections together online for ease of communication and media sharing? How else would all the things these networks do, be performed in an efficient manner?
There's no value to KiK, WhatsApp, instant messaging, email etc? Because all Facebook is primarily, is a communication platform, whether you're sharing text or images or video.
I think you've got it dramatically wrong. These things are worth a trillion dollars, and the value has been proven true across every culture on earth.
That's kind of my point, these things which are seemingly frivolous at first have actually evolved into "trillion" dollar entities that we all rely on. That's pretty fucking radical. Did we all need Instagram or Snapchat a decade ago? No, but now because we all wanted these services, they have a foothold in both our personal and business worlds.
My point was only that while these social networks seem obvious, and boring, they are in fact pretty radical.
Even if Facebook and Twitter are a waste of time (you could probably convince me of this, in fact), saying how the US does them well is called "damning with faint praise."
The US invents other things besides Twitter and Facebook.
