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Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#61

Post by PostOnce »

Muuuchem wrote: post #55
geowwy wrote: post #33

I expected PCs to be in every home pretty much forever. Now a lot of non-tech people prefer phones and tablets.

Curious, aren't phones and tablets essentially just smaller personal computers?

As kobeya points out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15719171

they are not the same thing

they do less; the software is restricted, especially on iOS, there are _rules_ set out by the manufacturer about what is acceptable in software on the platform, both thematically and functionally. An app generally can't interfere with other apps, it can't be a dope wars style game about drugs; there are a lot more caveats, but I am far from aware of them all. For a long time you couldn't get a compiler or interpreter on iOS, so you couldn't use your "computer" to make more software... so it wasn't general-purpose at all, since you by definition couldn't change its purpose without the ability to make new software.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#62

Post by justhackedme »

michaelchisari wrote: post #14

The blockchain. A strange thing to say when Bitcoin is nearing $8k each, but I'm not interested in cryptocurrencies as an abstract store of value based on the fever of the market. By now, however, I really thought someone would have found a use for the blockchain as the underpinning of some kind of new app or tech that would be able to create real value for bitcoin or whichever crypto they built it on. However, we ju…

What does "blockchain" do?

If you can answer that question, it'll be worth it.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#63

Post by Jtsummers »

mwidell wrote: post #50
Jtsummers wrote: post #17

I'm not sure I expected it to take the world "by storm", but I expected more from Google Wave. It was a great concept, by a major company, but it was too slow on release and the rollout killed it. In retrospect, it probably wouldn't have lasted anyways. Google was in the process of minimizing their federated communication services by that point, and that was another major selling point of Google Wave's initial propos…

I agree. Looking back though, I think that platforms such as Slack, have incorporated many of the key things that made Google Wave a great concept.

True. Chat bots supply some of the functionality. In Wave you could have bots which would replace, alter, or add content based on things you typed in or some other rules. Like you could have a stock ticker bot, or one that inserted maps, or ones to do live translations.

The collaborative document editing in Google Docs improved afterwards, the Google Wave wikipedia entry doesn't mention this but I have some vague recollection of some of their work being migrated into Google Docs to improve it in that regard. That may be completely wrong though since I can't seem to verify it.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#64

Post by justhackedme »

kobeya wrote: post #39

The general-purpose computer. It's a dinosaur on the verge of extinction at the hands of walled-garden app stores on phones and tablets. I never, ever expected that to happen.

This is wrong.

If you're 10 or 65 this is correct, but for anyone else the PC has not only been increasing in use but other parts of your life are filled with other computers.

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#65

Post by sincerely »

kobeya wrote: post #44
ckarmann wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter

It's like Facebook, but without pictures, friends, or events! Just status updates. Oh, and they're limited to 140 characters. It's going to be awesome . /s

turns out restrictions can breed creativity :)

Re: Ask HN: What tech were you convinced would take the world by storm but didn't?

#70

Post by nayuki »

true_religion wrote: post #57

Xhtml. I bought into it completely but hmtl5 is a better system.

XHTML5 works today, and my site is live proof. It helps catch dumb typos when typing HTML code by hand. It also means the CSS is more likely to be applied to the correct DOM tree.
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