4 ms·

10 years is a long time. This was back when I still heard people seriously asking if the internet would last. It was even plausible! Google was only a few years

10 years is a long time. This was back when I still heard people seriously asking if the internet would last. It was even plausible! Google was only a few years out from its IPO. Few people thought the internet could help elect a president (and I don't mean the current guy). A lot changed in the last ten years. It may not seem like it because most of those changes were refinements on things we already had at the time. We've just been in a long period of revisions. New programming tools, new social networks, new [insert thing we've had since the '90s]. The late '90s and first half of the '00s were full of radical changes, so it seems less significant in context. We're probably on the brink of another radical upheaval like the '90s. There's lots of money flowing around, lots of amazing and well-refined tools, and all the low hanging fruit is more or less captured. No one's getting rich on "x as a service" anymore. People will have to really change something to capture the next huge payday, and the first few will set off a cascade of changed expectations.

BuuQu9hu 9y ago
"10 years is a long time. This was back when I still heard people seriously asking if the internet would last." In 2007 the web, the mainstream part of internet, had been going on for 17 years. And the internet was even older. If people thought 10 years ago that the internet could disappear, they think the same today and in 10 years as well. " It was even plausible! Google was only a few years out from its IPO. Few people thought the internet could help elect a president (and I don't mean the current guy)." Oh. Because without these two anecdotals event the internet couldn't last? "A lot changed in the last ten years" Not that much. Facebook, twitter and youtube were already around. The main difference is that we lost everything else. We have less and less choice. But it was already starting in 2007.
tialaramex 9y ago
"people seriously asking if the internet would last" I guess I can see this seeming reasonable in the early 1940s, but it was fully crazy even before Tim built this awful Heath Robinson hypertext system we're using, let alone this century. The Network is not like cars, or pants, it's not a passing fad that societies grow bored of, it's at the heart of what we are as people, it will outlive us all. I remember trying to explain a lot of this stuff in the early 1990s when I was a teenager - to my parents and being bewildered by how little they understood what had already happened and what would inevitably happen next. It was really like I'm stood on a beach, there has been a distant rumble and the tide is going out very fast, and I'm saying "Inland. Mum, Dad, right now. Don't stop to pick up towels and stare at the horizon, we must hurry inland or we will drown" and they don't get it at all.
sundarurfriend 9y ago
Wow. You just made me realize that most of the big changes I'd mentally spread out over 20 or 25 years happened just in the last decade. In 2007, I was considered a pretty high-tech guy for just having a blog and being able to edit it. It was still possible to add entries to Wikipedia about things that were not super obscure or recent news. phpBB forums still ruled the Internet. And reddit was a toddler! It has been like that C. S. Lewis quote - day by day, it felt like nothing big has changed, but looking back, everything is different.
osteele 9y ago
Ten years ago my home page showed up on the first page (top ten) of search results for a Google search for just my first name, or just my last name. I've never been particular famous—there were just no individuals with a web presence, outside of tech. [But mostly I just came here to practice using an em dash correctly…]
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  I'm more impressed with the ellipsis.

BuuQu9hu 9y ago

"10 years is a long time. This was back when I still heard people seriously asking if the internet would last." In 2007 the web, the mainstream part of internet, had been going on for 17 years. And the internet was even older. If people thought 10 years ago that the internet could disappear, they think the same today and in 10 years as well. " It was even plausible! Google was only a few years out from its IPO. Few people thought the internet could help elect a president (and I don't mean the current guy)." Oh. Because without these two anecdotals event the internet couldn't last? "A lot changed in the last ten years" Not that much. Facebook, twitter and youtube were already around. The main difference is that we lost everything else. We have less and less choice. But it was already starting in 2007.

tialaramex 9y ago

"people seriously asking if the internet would last" I guess I can see this seeming reasonable in the early 1940s, but it was fully crazy even before Tim built this awful Heath Robinson hypertext system we're using, let alone this century. The Network is not like cars, or pants, it's not a passing fad that societies grow bored of, it's at the heart of what we are as people, it will outlive us all. I remember trying to explain a lot of this stuff in the early 1990s when I was a teenager - to my parents and being bewildered by how little they understood what had already happened and what would inevitably happen next. It was really like I'm stood on a beach, there has been a distant rumble and the tide is going out very fast, and I'm saying "Inland. Mum, Dad, right now. Don't stop to pick up towels and stare at the horizon, we must hurry inland or we will drown" and they don't get it at all.

sundarurfriend 9y ago

Wow. You just made me realize that most of the big changes I'd mentally spread out over 20 or 25 years happened just in the last decade. In 2007, I was considered a pretty high-tech guy for just having a blog and being able to edit it. It was still possible to add entries to Wikipedia about things that were not super obscure or recent news. phpBB forums still ruled the Internet. And reddit was a toddler! It has been like that C. S. Lewis quote - day by day, it felt like nothing big has changed, but looking back, everything is different.

osteele 9y ago

Ten years ago my home page showed up on the first page (top ten) of search results for a Google search for just my first name, or just my last name. I've never been particular famous—there were just no individuals with a web presence, outside of tech. [But mostly I just came here to practice using an em dash correctly…]

rainbowmverse 9y ago
I'm more impressed with the ellipsis.