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Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

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Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#41
post #27

Crypto currencies probably. I could see taking a generation for them to be mainstream and understood by the public the way the internet is today.

I very much doubt that. Tech people love it as a nice invention with a libertarian twist. But what is the incentive for my grand-mother to use it over regular cash?

Being able to send any amount money anywhere all over the world with no fees or restrictions and with great privacy isn't interesting?

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#42
I'd say IE5.5.

All those dHTML shit, like DirectX, MIDI, .htc (Javascript Components), for videos, a sane CSS box model, css and inter-page transformations, VML for vector graphics, VRML for VR (buzzword), XML islands (influenced e4x and later JSX), the original xhr object, native cryto APIs, etc.

You can even program jscript on server side with asp, or execute standalone with ActiveScript, even control native GUI like customizing your folder, the browser can be morphed to the file explorer. You can make apps with few kb of jscript unlike 55MB electron install bundle.

The Windows help files (CHM) are like thousand years better than macOS counterparts and linux man files. CHM was the de facto ebook format back then and it works really well with features like indexable topics and full text search. We now have to use devdocs.io or dash.

yes it has its quirks and worms, but it was way ahead of its time.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#43

Look back 20 years to 1997. Before Windows 2000 brought together the home and server codebases. Before the internet was available on mobile phones. Heck, back then the internet was used by less than 2% of the global population. What was 20 years ahead of its time then? What would you have looked at and thought "That'll be massive in 20 years"? About the only thing I can think of is VR. Which Sega tried to launch in t…

VR is not exactly massive now.

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#45
post #19
post #16

Nuclear fusion? I can see this thing in 20 years http://news.mit.edu/2015/small-modular-efficient-fusion-plan...

Nuclear fusion energy is always 40 years before beeing production ready, at least since the 1950s.

Nuclear fusion is mostly some amount of investment away. It's never been funded at the levels that predict "30 years away". In fact, funding has been continuously reduced: http://imgur.com/sjH5r

Re: Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time?

#49
What does that really mean? Do you mean projects that are being worked on right now and that will be delivered in 20 years? Or projects that are finished now and that will be understood in 20 years? Or projects that people thought wouldn't be possible before 20 years?

1: VR, self driving vehicles, nuclear fusion, artificial photosynthesis, quantum computers, robots that can manipulate things like men, wave energy harvesting, colonize mars, cure cancer, cure Alzheimer's disease.

2: no idea!

3: drones, deepmind, blue led, electric sports cars, flyboards, voice activated assistants, smart wearables...

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