> Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick client to butt back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what "the edge" is all about: In a world of increasingly ubiquitous computing power we are well advised to reflect on where our computation happens and how we can make the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal. Which is exactly why we the cynics say we've come fu…
> from thick client to butt back to thick client - did you build something that replaces "cloud" with "butt"?
Ooops, forgot about that extension running on the machine I wrote that comment on.
It is interesting to see that as technology advances, predictions of the past become more and more true, though they may not necessarily look like what the predictors originally thought. In this case, I think of the network is the computer. It's been for a while, but not yet completely, but it's becoming even more so as time passes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gage
Slight devil's advocate episteme: what about an even-further generalization? How about: the market is the computer? Not only is the network essentially imbricated with/in the market, but recognizing the market in the role of the computation also means recognizing the roles of all of the different functional components, not just the mechanical/computational "atoms". Basically, I think that thinking this way lets us tr…
Thanks for sharing that view. I have a theory on the same kind of reasoning : marketing combined with instant purchase capabilities (online buying and fast shipping) transformed the mass consumers into testers. Items are built, marketed, discovered, bought, shipped and reviewed faster, which allows "experimentation" with consumers. The mass consumers market is a giant lab, paid by the consumers.
> Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick client to butt back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what "the edge" is all about: In a world of increasingly ubiquitous computing power we are well advised to reflect on where our computation happens and how we can make the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal. Which is exactly why we the cynics say we've come fu…
> Cynics might of course argue that we have come full circle, from thick client to butt back to thick client, but that would miss the point of what "the edge" is all about: In a world of increasingly ubiquitous computing power we are well advised to reflect on where our computation happens and how we can make the most efficient use of the resources at our disposal. Which is exactly why we the cynics say we've come fu…
> from thick client to butt back to thick client - did you build something that replaces "cloud" with "butt"?
If you are willing to embrace the term 'cloud' - as everyone here seems willing to do, including the Cloudflare (...) guy - then you have already admitted that you are happy with that type of garbage. 'Edge' seems trivial in comparison. If you really care about this bullshit then you should agree to avoid all these VC/buzzword/corporate/marketing bullshit terms.
I deeply hope it's a buzzword prank so that non-tech people and managers will start demanding "edgy software" and "edgy computing" and looking to hire "rockstar edgelord".
We (Cloudflare) have largely stopped talking about the 'edge' for some of the reasons cited in the article. 1. No one actually knows where it is or what it means. 2. It conjures images of classical ‘edge compute’ use cases like the self driving cars in the article. Those use cases tend to be exceptionally specialized (or just silly). 3. Edge implies a core or origin exists, and maybe it doesn’t need to. We would rath…
A fully mesh P2P computer cloud would be magical. Everybody is the edge that way :)
If you are willing to embrace the term 'cloud' - as everyone here seems willing to do, including the Cloudflare (...) guy - then you have already admitted that you are happy with that type of garbage. 'Edge' seems trivial in comparison. If you really care about this bullshit then you should agree to avoid all these VC/buzzword/corporate/marketing bullshit terms.
Unfortunately, you need to live with those terms if you want money, because people with money use them. I assume they don't even care if a given buzzword has any relation to reality whatsoever - all that matters is whether the market (read: other rich and wannabe-rich people) thinks that buzzword is hot or not.