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This reminds me of the naysayers from the early internet, and I think we can look at each stage of the internet's growth with these same glasses. 1) email: it
by pedalpete 9y ago
This reminds me of the naysayers from the early internet, and I think we can look at each stage of the internet's growth with these same glasses.
1) email: it will never replace the post-office. You can only send text. Oh, ok, they've added images now, well, its' too slow for most people to download them, and now I've got all this spam. We use it in our company, but it isn't really for consumers. Oh, then hotmail...
2) You're not going to buy things online. The shipping costs will be too high. The logistics are all wrong. Will you trust an online shop with your credit card?? No way! This e-commerce thing is dead in the water. Sure, you point to the 'growth', but it's equal to "the proportion of US GDP comprised by toothpick sales"
3) Blogs?? Seriously. We're a news agency. We pay professional journalists to research and write compelling stories. Can you trust some random person in their basement writing a blog? Sorry, no contest. Blogs can't compete with major media companies.
4) Music downloads? Why would you spend 20 minutes downloading a song ILLEGALLY?? Where are you going to get it from. We'll stop all of this. CDs are the way forward. Oh, this internet thing has just destroyed our business model, iTunes to the rescue. But now people want to stream music. No they don't internet speed isn't fast enough to stream, and people want to own music, this music streaming thing isn't going anywhere!
5) Video? You've got to be kidding. Oh, that youtube thing is fine for weirdo's who want to make video's for their friends, but people will keep going to movies and paying for cable. The quality isn't good enough, and they don't have the great content. This internet thing isn't going anyway.
6) Rent someone's apartment online? Are you nuts! I'm not going to let some crazy person stay in my place, and I'm not going to stay in somebody else's. These internet people are crazy. Our hotel business is just fine. In fact, I think we should increase prices and start charging people hidden fees like "resort charges"...
7) Get in a stranger's car? A stranger that I found online!!??? Look, when I was a kid, my parents had two rules. Don't talk to strangers, and never get in a strangers car. Now you're telling me to go online, find a stranger and get in their car! This is madness. Just get in a cab! They'll take you where you want to go and you can trust them!
Please add your own "this is going nowhere" stories, I'm keen to see what else is out there, there are TONS.
The blockchain may use the internet as an underlying protocol, but it is as disruptive to the finance industry as Napster was to music, AirBnB to hotels, Uber/Lyft (please come to Australia Lyft) was to cabs, Amazon to retail, etc. etc.
The difference being, that blockchain is an open technology that is enabling this disruption, rather than a single company.
- hanselot 9y agoThis whole crypto thing is a bubble. You will see it fall and never recover. No, not like the other 7000 times it crashed by more than 40%, no this time it will be impossible to recover, because people can't inherently value something that doesn't exist. Here use this paper I got from a place I pay to keep my money for me instead.
- hanselot 9y agoJust try to get your money out of crypto! You will see, one day one of the big guys is going to sell all his coins and cause a market crash from which it won't recover. Then you are going to be glad to have this gold-backed paper (Oh wait, don't try and test that last part).
- Agebor 9y agoPeople value proxies, like cash. It goes like this: proxy (cash/cryptocurrency) -> belief -> result/other resource
- lotyrin 9y agoThing is, is blockchain as of today the internet-financial http or gopher?
- 4ndrewl 9y agoBe careful of Survival Bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- United857 9y agoOften times, the fundamental idea is sound. However the first players in the market gain in the short run but are out-competed in the long run: e.g. Netscape, Yahoo, Nokia, Blackberry, Real Networks...