Technology has a way of feeling incremental. Think about this past year, what really happened? We got a slightly faster iPhone, Facebook did some interface tweaks, Microsoft released a new version of Windows. These seem like really small improvements. But if you look back to the original iPhone, what Facebook looked like in Zuck's dorm room, or what Windows 3.1 looked like, the change is staggering. The linked video…
Your point is well taken but there have also been a number of things that did not feel incremental to me when introduced to them. Google, DSL/Cable providers, Napster, iPhone, YouTube, and Bitcoin all felt like big jumps.
Technology has a way of feeling incremental. Think about this past year, what really happened? We got a slightly faster iPhone, Facebook did some interface tweaks, Microsoft released a new version of Windows. These seem like really small improvements. But if you look back to the original iPhone, what Facebook looked like in Zuck's dorm room, or what Windows 3.1 looked like, the change is staggering. The linked video…
I found a book about mid 90's business cards. They are all, every single one of them, unusable today.
Technology has a way of feeling incremental. Think about this past year, what really happened? We got a slightly faster iPhone, Facebook did some interface tweaks, Microsoft released a new version of Windows. These seem like really small improvements. But if you look back to the original iPhone, what Facebook looked like in Zuck's dorm room, or what Windows 3.1 looked like, the change is staggering. The linked video…
> How could a page take 30 seconds to load? Why does everything have a murky gray background?
This perfectly describes the modern. JS-overloaded "subtle shading" design of modern web apps...
The grey backgrounds were really weird, in retrospect. But they were cool and different! Oh, and that's why grey on grey is back-- fads coming and going to look cool and different.
Did anybody notice that the average internet user today is pretty similar to the one presented in the video? Users still need a lot of hand holding and guidance to use the web. Back then they used only a handful of sites which is still the case today with Facebook, Twitter and maybe a couple of other sites (news sites, craigslist, Youtube). On another note I somewhat wish we could go back to a (slightly) less interac…
I think we have better solutions. Most of my social contacts are on Facebook with an optimized ranking system so I see what's important. Much of my work is handled on wikis instead of people emailing me documents. Links people might have emailed are now posted on twitter or other websites. Quick questions and answers are now in IM. Job inquiries are left on LinkedIn or HR management software. If your inbox is jammed…
Im curious to know what kind of job you have in which you don't get lots of emails? Maybe its because I've always had jobs working with customers but from my experience customers love sending emails.
Yeah, perhaps my comment on work email only applies to people in my line of work, engineering and not working directly with customers. For people on the customer side maybe it's unavoidable (although there are apps attempting to address this). But as far as non-customer-facing engineers go, I've found that if you're constantly flooded with email you're probably in an organization with lots of bureaucracy where few people feel empowered to make decisions. For instance, when I want to hire someone (I manage), I do it by sending an email to the HR person saying essentially 'hire them'. My boss has empowered me to make this decision and no other departments get in the way, except if they limit the budget.
Technology has a way of feeling incremental. Think about this past year, what really happened? We got a slightly faster iPhone, Facebook did some interface tweaks, Microsoft released a new version of Windows. These seem like really small improvements. But if you look back to the original iPhone, what Facebook looked like in Zuck's dorm room, or what Windows 3.1 looked like, the change is staggering. The linked video…
Your point is well taken but there have also been a number of things that did not feel incremental to me when introduced to them. Google, DSL/Cable providers, Napster, iPhone, YouTube, and Bitcoin all felt like big jumps.
Also wikipedia, stack overflow, multicore processors (no more having your system lock up on most heavy tasks), git versus svn/cvs. Lots of technological advances that improved things greatly. Just takes some additional thinking to recall what those things are.
I still recall going from a single core AMD to an Intel q6600 quad core CPU and thinking how amazing it was that I did not have to worry about my entire CPU locking up on one bad app going bonkers and eating 100% of the CPU. It became possible to have an app crash and max out a core and not even notice it immediately. Even when OSs and apps did not do mult-core processing overly well, I still manually set the affinity to most heavy apps so they were isolated to their own cores.