I think most participants in the Internet circa 1996 and personal computers in the early 1980s would understand this idea. The Internet was being widely written off as a toy that many couldn't ever imagine having practical applications. Case in point, this widely-cited piece from 1998: > The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connec…
What about the next big things that turn into toys? I'm thinking of the Segway. In the days around it's unveiling there were all sorts of people saying this was the next big thing and it would revolutionize human transportation. They were even saying that cities would be rebuilt to accommodate them. These days I only see them being used as toys for tourists to ride around on doing city tours.
I think most participants in the Internet circa 1996 and personal computers in the early 1980s would understand this idea. The Internet was being widely written off as a toy that many couldn't ever imagine having practical applications. Case in point, this widely-cited piece from 1998: > The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connec…
>The Internet was being widely written off as a toy
> You could use glasses, but not everyone wants to wear them. What about contact lenses?
Yes because contacts are an absolute pleasure in comparison to glasses.
Are you being sarcastic? I've been wearing contacts and glasses for nearly 40 years. Contacts are absolutely an absolute pleasure compared to glasses. I only wear glasses when I absolutely have to (i.e., right after I take out my contacts until I have to go to sleep at night and vice versa in the morning). For instance, I hate working out in glasses. They get all foggy and start slipping down my face from the sweat. Doing high intensity sprints in glasses is the worst.
I think most participants in the Internet circa 1996 and personal computers in the early 1980s would understand this idea. The Internet was being widely written off as a toy that many couldn't ever imagine having practical applications. Case in point, this widely-cited piece from 1998: > The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connec…
This makes me wonder, though. I wonder if you went back to the very earliest days of the WWW, did everyone see it as a toy? Or were there already people (those developing it, perhaps) who saw that it had awesome non-toy potential? I suspect people brand new tech as "toys" when they're not, and I bet there's also developers that take their toys and call them products :) Maybe the solution is to completely discard the…
I was in college in the mid-90s. I don't know anyone who saw it as a toy. We'd already been using Pine and BBS for many years prior and this seemed like the next iteration of that. The first time I saw the WWW was when I was in a computer lab and someone was on ESPN (or some other sport's website) on the computer next to me. I leaned over and asked them what they were looking at. They showed me what a browser is and how you go to web pages. I tried it out and was hooked. I immediately started to try to make my own webpages. Of course, back then webpages were ugly, but they were infinitely easier to build than these days. No CSS, no JavaScript, just plain HTML and nothing else. Anyway, getting off topic. The WWW was not seen as a toy by anyone that I knew of.
I was working on software in the 3D printing space back in 2012, and I too thought it was going to be something big that looked like a toy. However, I got out once I realized that speed of prints mattered a lot of consumers. And the current methods of consumer 3D printers were FDM (fused deposition modeling) and Stereolithography, which both had asymptotic limitation on how fast you can get a print to go. For FDM, th…
PDAs fit this IMO. We had newtons, palm pilots (Clie), Windows CE, devices (iPaq, Axim, ...), all of them were for geeks/hobbyists only until iPhone. Anyone carrying one was considered a geek out of the norm. Now you couldn't pry a smartphone from a non-geek's hands.
I was a geeky programmer (still am), but I had absolutely no interest in owning a cell phone or any other PDA until the first iPhone came out. I was floored by it. The touch screen, the built in useable web browser, the apps, etc. were so much better than what had come before.
Wire transfers between US and EU take a few hours to clear and cost $25. I send them all the time. In Europe, transfers between all banks are becoming instantaneous starting Jan 2020: https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta... The cost is pennies. No need for a crypto-anything solution.
US EU is a corridor with huge volume the legacy systems are therefore very very optimized for this. Inside EU Tx are basically inside the same system which is centralized and updating balances is super simple cheap and fast. Try to send some USD to Mexico or something instead. Also a Tx taking hours and costing 25 bucks is absolutely not going to allow the Internet of Value to show it's possibilities. It may be accep…
Like millions of people, I buy instant services on the Internet all the time using those nasty legacy "dumpster fire" systems.
They even provide a nice built-in feature called "chargeback" in case the service isn't what I expected. Cryptocurrencies don't seem to care about that part of customer experience at all.
(Btw, when you say "just watch this YouTube video about an amazing business opportunity", what I hear is: "I believe you're a sucker".)
I think most participants in the Internet circa 1996 and personal computers in the early 1980s would understand this idea. The Internet was being widely written off as a toy that many couldn't ever imagine having practical applications. Case in point, this widely-cited piece from 1998: > The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connec…
> By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's.
I wonder how big the fax machine's impact on the economy actually was; I feel like it probably was quite large. Not nearly as large as the internet, of course.
I think most participants in the Internet circa 1996 and personal computers in the early 1980s would understand this idea. The Internet was being widely written off as a toy that many couldn't ever imagine having practical applications. Case in point, this widely-cited piece from 1998: > The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in "Metcalfe's law"--which states that the number of potential connec…
What about the next big things that turn into toys? I'm thinking of the Segway. In the days around it's unveiling there were all sorts of people saying this was the next big thing and it would revolutionize human transportation. They were even saying that cities would be rebuilt to accommodate them. These days I only see them being used as toys for tourists to ride around on doing city tours.
I guess by a bit of a leap you could see it as a pre-cursor to city-wide electric transport, such as electric scooters?
> You could use glasses, but not everyone wants to wear them. What about contact lenses?
Contact lenses are a pita. I suspect it's going to be a smartphone-like form factor combined with a voice UI similar to the movie Her from 2013. Eventually the visuals on the phone screen will be replaced with a neural link. It would make sense if the implant is just a dumb antenna, combined with a removable "earbud" that connects it to the computing device.
We have not conceived useful applications that actually require AR yet. It has to be something requiring immediate feedback - maybe driving a car or piloting a similar vehicle would be such application.
Maybe stock market. Or something entirely unforseen, like data analysis or warehousing - using human intelligence better?
Voice is much too slow, as is listening - might as well use the current devices at those speeds.
Computers started with bookkeeping and mass production control. It took quite some time for them to penetrate office market or to (partially) replace the previously used communication tools.
Yes because contacts are an absolute pleasure in comparison to glasses.
You're thinking very small-picture here. Contacts can be improved upon somewhat if we have the technology to make them into full AR screens.
As could glasses, starting with how they're kept on your head and the weight. Just look at how far VR helmets have come, or skiing goggles. There's more that can be done still, but not enough pressure to do it.