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It's Cold in the Information Age

natalian.org

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Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#51

Post by buboard »

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter.

- VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on.

- javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's progress

- Uber has nothing critical to offer to technology except an also-ran in self driving cars

- kubernetes is relevant to like 100 people on earth, and doomed to be obsolete in 1 year. not critical to tech progress

- AWS isn't critical to tech progress either, its bubbled because of easy startup money and lazyness. will be a good thing to see it fade away. Meanwhile , check googles TPU offerings for some progress.

- Who needs a 3rd browser engine when every website looks like bootstrap?

Those said, crypto is entering the plateau of productivity. It 's being held back by hostile regulation , governments and banks and AI hasn't even started , its going to be a wild ride. The web is slowly decentralizing which will be huge too

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#53

Post by vortegne »

buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

"javascript frontends are the great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the web doesnt use them"

Wait what? Have you like, been on the web at all? How the hell are javascript frontends not used everywhere?!

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#54

Post by apatters »

pbourke wrote: post #9

I really don’t get articles like this. You can rent a fleet of computers for an hour for a few dollars. Your cellular phone is more powerful than the time-sharing systems of 25 years ago. There is pervasive wireless broadband internet available in much of the world. Single computers can be bought with dozens of cores and a lake of RAM. You can look up nearly any piece of human knowledge in a few seconds. The labor of…

None of that directly describes business (or consumer) value. It is mostly a recitation of information technology statistics.

If you look at the period of say 1990-2010 there was an absolutely insane ROI on human capital invested into IT. Arguably this level of ROI only happens once or twice in a century. You had young guys in their basements, garages etc. inventing life-changing technology with no investment other than a PC, an Internet connection, and time. It basically all revolved around getting people a PC, a 'net connection, and a phone, and then delivering services over those things.

Everyone saw what was going on and there was an unprecedented global migration of labor into the IT industry. There was a perception that anyone could be a millionaire, and anyone could change the world, etc. and some degree of truth to it.

There's no denying that much of the low hanging fruit is now gone, and there are more people in the industry than ever before (many of whom had huge expectations based on what they had witnessed transpiring a decade or two prior). So of course you are going to have a changing industry and an expectations mismatch. The old days are over and they're not coming back.

Any new wave of innovation and disruption is at least as likely to come from a non-IT industry as it is from IT.

There are still trillions of dollars to be made in IT. Since the future is never evenly distributed, a lot of these dollars are in emerging markets, and/or in industries which are being transformed by the IT revolution's latest waves a bit late in the game.

But it is a different industry now, there are fewer opportunities for disruption and there are many many more fingers in the pie. In general the way this money is made will look a little bit more like how money's made in mature industries every year.

There's no fighting history and you're not going to be the next Steve Jobs. But the pie is so big that you can carve out whatever kind of little niche you would like, as long as you understand the rules of the game.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#55

Post by tannhaeuser »

peter_retief wrote: post #31

It is sad that open source has been hijacked by the likes of Amazon. However, open hardware is an exciting option with desktop fabrication, electronics and low energy wireless creating new opportunities for small entrepreneurs

I think the situation is a bit more complex: the proliferation of F/OSS itself has driven the market into the situation where integrating and running other people's commodity software is one of the only commercially viable options left. Another factor is that commodity hardware is so powerful, and has been for over ten years, that it just had to be put back into the hands of datacenters/clouds.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#56

Post by oxfordmale »

vortegne wrote: post #53
buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

"javascript frontends are the great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the web doesnt use them" Wait what? Have you like, been on the web at all? How the hell are javascript frontends not used everywhere?!

"AWS isn't critical either, its bubbled because of easy startup money and lazyness. will be a good thing to see it fade away" Wait what ? Have you, been on the web at all ? Ten thousands of websites are hosted, or partially hosted on AWS

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#57

Post by buboard »

vortegne wrote: post #53
buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

"javascript frontends are the great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the web doesnt use them" Wait what? Have you like, been on the web at all? How the hell are javascript frontends not used everywhere?!

they do have a lot of usage but barely everywhere. remember most of the web is wordpress.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#58

Post by luckylion »

buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

I still believe in VR, but driven by porn, not games or productivity. That niche seems to be doing very well and has been a technological driver more than once. Basically everybody that I've talked to that was skeptical and tried it was a believer after they've tried it. When that goes mainstream, you've got a very solid market with lots of consumers.

It won't be the $1500 + a high end PC version of VR though.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#59

Post by jhanschoo »

buboard wrote: post #51

I love myself some pessimism but tech is not slowing, instead its HN being obsessed with things that don't matter. - VR was a niche from the start, a lot of people were doubtful, and the people that weren't know that it 's not going to work and are already moving on. - javascript frontends are great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the public-facing web doesnt use them, they 're irrelevant to tech's prog…

it's hard to take this comment seriously...

> javascript frontends are the great for programmer fights, but thankfully most of the web doesnt use them

By frequency of retrieval, JS frameworks are the majority of websites served.

> kubernetes is relevant to like 100 people on earth

Even if it's not k8s, most companies benefit from a container orchestration system.

> crypto is entering the plateau of productivity

cryptocurrency will always be a niche product until it can provide the same services and assurances that banks do. Most people overwhelmingly prefer the availability and security from carelessness, petty fraud, and mismanagement that banks provide that they even pay for these services, than the not-entirely-complete protection from state actors that crypto provides. That's what holding crypto back, not regulation.

Re: It's Cold in the Information Age

#60

Post by 314 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #28
nafey wrote: post #2

70s and 80s were relatively quiet on the tech innovation front. We might be headed for a couple of decades like that.

Except for having invented the microprocessor, the x64 and ARM ISAs, Unix, C, SQL, SGML, TCP/IP, digital audio and video, electronic music, GUIs, logic programming, and basically everything we're taking as granted today. Edit: x86 of course

The x64 ISA was invented in the late 90s. The rest of the list looks accurate.
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