>Clearly my mom has no reason to know github even exists.
Your mom probably also has no reason to know that the Haber—Bosch Process exists, but it's still one of the most important scientific developments of last few centuries, even to her.
You're comparing github to the Haber-Bosch process??!
While I think that is ridiculous, your claim appears to imply that even though my mom is not aware of github, its existance is as important that a major part of our civilization's sustainability relies on it?
No, thats just plain stupid.
Anyway - my original comment was that github is only valuable as "the most important social network" to a very narrow portion of the populous.
The funny part about this is that most software that the generally public deals with regularly is not on Github anyway and even the ones that are existed just fine for many years before Github so it's not as if there is some contingenct on Github or something.
Oh that's just ridiculous. I mean there's a point of "jumping the shark" here even though I hate that phrase. I mean come on, it's not that great. It's arguable that this whole attitude about Github is massively pretentious and overblown. I don't think we can compare Github to the development of agriculture, pasteurization, classical mechanics, etc.
It's frustrating that one cannot make an analogy these days on the internet without some people assuming that you're making a comparison of the analogues. If a comparison seems unreasonable, it seems to me like the obvious thing to do is reread it and see if it makes sense as an analogy instead.
The problem is that an analogy's illustrative power is increased by using an extreme analogue, so if you interpret a good analogy as a comparison, it will always look like hyperbole. On the other hand, intentionally misconstruing analogies as comparisons is a great dark-side rhetorical technique, if you're into that sort of thing.
I think this issue is compounded by the "skim this and spend .02 seconds on critically think about it before moving on to the next data-byte online" syndrome.
Your mom probably also has no reason to know that the Haber—Bosch Process exists, but it's still one of the most important scientific developments of last few centuries, even to her.