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

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

#381

Post by lucozade »

tuomosipola wrote: post #257
Swizec wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet easy enough for basically everyone in the world to learn. Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Russian was a huge candidate as well. Wanna learn that? I’m a native Slavic speaker and I wouldn’t wish a Slavic language on anyone who needs to become fluent enough to do business. Spanish was (is?) a big candidate too, that one is about as hard as English i guess. Portuguese? I…

I have a feeling that the right timing of English-speaking political dominance in 19th and 20th century combined with global information technology boom has contributed a lot here. It could have been French (and in a sense was) if they had had movies and Internet earlier. To me English doesn't feel logical at times (maybe a subjective observation) but at least we all can agree that the ortography with its historical…

I think your point about cultural dominance, and specifically youth culture, is the key one.

I travel a fair bit and it still surprises me how often I hear English, usually lyrics, regardless of the local language.

English isn't particularly logical. This is partly because it is a hodge-podge of Germanic and Latin roots. I think its also because it's so widely used. It's accepted a ton of vocab from around the world and usage seems to have a "natural selection" effect on grammar.

I'm not sure I agree about French. It was the main diplomatic language before American hegemony but I'm not sure it ever really took off much as a second language. I actually think that German was the natural choice if things had turned out differently. The reason is that, in the 20s and 30s, German was the lingua franca of science and technology. Germany was also a pioneer in film. These were only just starting to dominate culture at that time and, without the upheaval of WWII, could easily have spread from there.

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

#382

Post by dkersten »

platinumrad wrote: post #342
secura wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why have a full pretty UI at the cost of latency? If the latency begins to cross a threshold and begins to be inconvenient or distracting, it is time to step and think that may be the pretty UI is too ahead of its time, and we should stop making the UI prettier than it can be at this time.

I think you greatly underestimate the number of non-technical people who care more about gee-whiz coolness than responsiveness. Back in the aqua era of OS X with the super sluggish genie effects and so on, the general public loved it and it was mostly "power users" and professionals who went into the settings to tone down the animations.

I dunno. Maybe initially, sure, but I've seen countless people use, for example, internet explorer where half the screen was taken up by malware toolbars (I wish I was exaggerating...), which is not pretty, not good UX, not gee-whiz coolness at all. And they never once complained, they just accepted it as the way it is and kept on going.

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

#383

Post by muzani »

I expected microtransaction games to take off, but not in the form of "pay to win" as it is today.

I expected things like buying side quests or episodes for games. People could just pay for as much content as they would play. It would have been similar to how musicians could sell singles instead of albums.

Paradox games and CS:GO seem to have adopted this model very well but it never happened in mobile games, where microtransactions would have been most successful.

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

#384

Post by tramGG »

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…

You should check out "Synapse AI" -- it's one of the first pieces of blockchain tech that actually makes sense.

They want to decentralize AI and facilitate democratized AI economies on the blockchain.

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

#386

Post by herbst »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #363

I don't know if this has a name, but... ICQ-like "searchable" instant messaging. Let me explain myself. In the late 90s, there was an IM client called ICQ. For starters, its UI was leaps and bounds ahead of anything to be seen in the next decade, and it had functionality like bots or groups, that has again become widespread a few years ago. But what I'm talking about is the fact that I could look for "female, age bet…

Facebook Graph search was like this (and creepier as people didnt always know _how_ they are searchable) nur Facebook heavily crippled this in the Last years.

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

#387

Post by colejohnson66 »

ridiculous_fish wrote: post #59
tlrobinson wrote: post #2

The converse is possibly even more interesting: what tech were you convinced would fail but took the world by storm?

x86. Even Intel seemed bent on dismantling it with Itanium. And while they were distracted, AMD humiliated Goliath with the Opteron. It was EPIC - no wait, it wasn't!

Wasn’t Itanium a good idea, just too ahead of its time?

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

#389

Post by herbst »

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 was so hyper. And then it did Not even work on my computer. Dont remember Why, but when it finally did it was already dead.

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

#390

Post by icebraining »

tuomosipola wrote: post #257
Swizec wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet easy enough for basically everyone in the world to learn. Just think, it could’ve been French. It was dominant for many many years. Russian was a huge candidate as well. Wanna learn that? I’m a native Slavic speaker and I wouldn’t wish a Slavic language on anyone who needs to become fluent enough to do business. Spanish was (is?) a big candidate too, that one is about as hard as English i guess. Portuguese? I…

I have a feeling that the right timing of English-speaking political dominance in 19th and 20th century combined with global information technology boom has contributed a lot here. It could have been French (and in a sense was) if they had had movies and Internet earlier. To me English doesn't feel logical at times (maybe a subjective observation) but at least we all can agree that the ortography with its historical…

It could have been French (and in a sense was) if they had had movies and Internet earlier.

Earlier? The French invented the movie theater.

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