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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 writte

• cookingrobot 7y ago
  By this test, is Lego the next big thing?
  • Tronno 7y ago
    Lego has an annual revenue in the billions and has recently grown bigger than Mattel or Hasbro. So, yes
  • swsieber 7y ago
    Already was - spawned games, movies, theme-park rides, etc.
  • jacobr1 7y ago
    Maybe? The definitions evolve and stretch. What if legos where made of smarter material or had more powerful components? 3D printing might actually be the right way to think about small-scale at-home manufacturing rather than per-brick components - but even then plenty of components (such as compute related) require different manufacturing methods - so standards based on something like lego might allow for interoperability. It's a toy ... until it is not.
  • DannyB2 7y ago
    The real test, I think, is something that has genuinely useful applications to anyone with a little bit of vision. Big entrenched players are unable to see the next big thing, because they see the world through the glasses of their successful business. Microsoft for example almost missed the internet, and suddenly realized it in 1995. I believe Bill Gates was quoted as saying it was just a fad. The funny thing is that more than a decade earlier (about 1980) I heard the same thing about "personal computers" or "microcomputers". Just a fad. A toy. Never will compete with IBM's "real" computers, etc. Similarly, these new fangled "automobile" thingies will never become popular. They are noisy. Smelly. Unreliable. Difficult to start. You can even break your arm if it kicks back while you are cranking it. And worst of all (gasp!) they frighten the horses! That's why these automobile thingies are just rich kid's toys. A fad. I guess they couldn't see that all of those imperfections I listed could be fixed. Back in the 1990s I saw this interesting tv program. Sorry, can't remember. It was about personal computers. The person being interviewed said the entrenched players NEVER see the next big thing coming. So they hire someone smart who will see it coming, and then tell them when its coming. And then when they are told this is the NEXT BIG THING! They never believe it. Speaking of Microsoft almost missing the internet, they did entirely miss the new generation of smartphones starting with the iPhone. Ballmer laughed at the iPhone. They woke up to the new reality after it was too late. Sorry iPhone and Android already dominated. Smart phones sold in unit volumes that dwarfed PC unit volumes. Win Phone 7, followed by an incompatible Win Phone 8 didn't stand a chance -- even with nice Nokia hardware.
    • 18pfsmt 7y ago
      They didn't miss it, they saw it as a threat to be stomped. They almost succeeded, but Google would've canned their game eventually. Believe it or not, "free stuff" is popular.
    • thaumasiotes 7y ago
      > Smart phones sold in unit volumes that dwarfed PC unit volumes. Popcorn sold in unit volumes even higher than that, but so what? These aren't comparable things.
      • 7y ago
  • blotter_paper 7y ago
    Yes; by 2036, 78% of the earth's surface will be composed of Mindstorms.
  • thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    If Lego blocks were bigger and all building codes and regulations were removed and zoning could be eliminated, then yes absolutely legos would be the next big thing that could upend the entire multi trillion dollar housing market. Imagine the enormous societal wealth creation, if anyone could build a house with the same ease (and lack of regulations) of building a website. of course, these hypothetical legos would need plumbing and electrical infrastructure and maybe a few other things ;)
    • Izkata 7y ago
      Brikawood homes https://www.simplemost.com/houses-made-wooden-lego-like-bricks/ https://www.simplemost.com/houses-made-wooden-lego-like-bric... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ierqMW_FxfE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ierqMW_FxfE
      • hanniabu 7y ago
        Do those need siding or is that an acceptable external wall? Would be nice if these structures were widely allowed, but I have a feeling that it would conflict with many building codes. That sawdust wall filler also looks like a fire hazard. Look like it'd be good fun building though!
  • mch82 7y ago
    Literally, no. Conceptually, maybe. Lego represents the construction of objects from catalogs of standard components. That’s in comparison to carving unique, one off toys from raw wood. Professional fabrication has followed in the footsteps of LEGO (and Lincoln Logs, Erector Set). If you use SketchUp to design a building you’ll notice it’s encouraged to use standard building components that can be picked from a library. Lots of those components can then be picked up at Home Depot. Ikea furniture kits are also similar to Lego (or at least the broader category of toy). LEGO’s Mindstorms GUI programming model is very forward looking. LabVIEW and Simulink are picking up on those concepts & professional engineers are definitely using them.
  • itronitron 7y ago
    if by Lego you mean Minecraft, then yes
• 18pfsmt 7y ago
  >The next problem is that it can take a very long time for a toy to turn into the next big thing. And humans are very impatient and are driven toward immediate gratification.
• l_t 7y ago
  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 "toy" / "non-toy" dichotomy. It seems like it just muddies the discussion when the important thing is to evaluate the actual merits of the product/technology in question.
  • marcosdumay 7y ago
    > I wonder if you went back to the very earliest days of the WWW, did everyone see it as a toy? The WWW that was created to share scientific papers? Or you mean the GP's Internet that was created to organize the US troops on the event of a nuclear strike? I guess so, there was plenty of people aware they were not toys. Most of those people did use them as toys most of the times, like everybody else at the time, but the toy classification was mostly from uninformed people and trolls.
    • l_t 7y ago
      I meant the WWW. Thanks for checking!
    • samplatt 7y ago
      >The WWW that was created to share scientific papers? Most of the citizens of the western world (even those with a degree) definitely pidgeon-hole expensive university projects as "toys", because they don't have one and don't see a need for one. Academia is a weird place and is often underestimated.
    • pavpanchekha 7y ago
      Just as a side note: the Internet was not actually created to organize US troops in the event of a nuclear strike. The Internet, the one initially birthed by ARPA, initially had academic and civilian aims. That said, some of the early research on networking was developed to aid the military in case of nuclear war. In particular, Paul Baran invented package switching explicitly to help the US air force maintain its defense radar network in case of war.
• mdorazio 7y ago
  I think your last sentence is perhaps the most important - timing the "Toys to Big Thing" transition is really hard and leaves a lot of dead companies in its wake. For example, at some point in the future, VR and AR will probably be in this category, but who knows how long it will actually take (basically-modern VR has been around since the 80s!) or what will cause the shift. Meanwhile, VR has left a decades-long trail of dead plans/businesses and AR seems to be doing the same.
  • NeoBasilisk 7y ago
    ehhhhh I would disagree with your statement that "basically-modern VR has been around since the 80s." It really seems like this phase of VR really began with the release of the Oculus Rift DK1. Sure there had been earlier prototypes floating around, but they weren't taken seriously.
    • cbhl 7y ago
      The game changer between the 80's VR and 10's VR is basically the smartphone. In the old days, folks were hooking up big bulky CRTs to their face. Now we have cheap flat panel displays as a commodity. But there are still more technical problems to solve before the killer application and corresponding headset will be cheap, useful, and lightweight enough for mass adoption.
  • throwaway_bad 7y ago
    Augmented reality is a great example. Everyone knows that it will become a "Big Thing" in the future. Like why would smartphones be the final form factor of personal computing? Of course there will be something that will dethrone it. But despite every big company throwing a couple billions at the problem for the last few years (Facebook's $2 billion acquisition of oculus, Google's $500 million investment into Magic Leap, Apple's acquisition of Metaio/ARkit, Microsoft Hololens), all we have are literal toys! So now you can't talk about AR as a serious subject anymore. People all dismiss it, saying we are still too early. I imagine it's like that for every "toy to big thing" transition.
    • 7y ago
• mraudiobook_com 7y ago
  Bitcoin fits all of your criteria perfectly
• tialaramex 7y ago
  I was certainly a "participant in the Internet circa 1996" (and before) and besides the inevitable quote from Krugman pretending not to understand what is happening here [Network effects don't care that "most people have nothing to say to each other" and we should laugh at a supposed "economist" who didn't understand that in 1998] I don't see a connection to the Internet as a "toy". I guess there are two and a half possible mistakes here, which I'll address separately. 1. The Network is a toy. No. At least as far back as the Treaty of Bern (in 1874) the importance of the global Network is so obvious that national governments give up a little sovereignty to have it work better. Communication makes the difference almost everywhere almost all the time. Bern of course is about written letters, but the Telephone follows the exact same course, and so if you accept the Internet as a natural successor all the same things apply. 2. Maybe the Internet is not the Network? This argument looks completely reasonable in 1986 when IP networks are mostly an American phenomenon and there is a lot of X.25 out in the rest of the world. Maybe the Network will be X.25. By 1996 that's a distant memory, everything is IP. It's a done deal, the Internet is the Network. 2.5. Mistaking the Web for the Internet. The Web initially looks like a toy. HTTP/0.9 era Web has lots of toy-like qualities. Academics have been designing powerful hypermedia technology for many years by 1990, surely this half-arsed tech demo from a CERN guy who isn't even a Computer Scientist is a flash in the pan? You can make a better argument that the Web is still a toy in 1996 than the Internet, I don't think it's a good argument but it can be made -- however the Web is just an application. A competitor hypermedia solution that crushes Tim's Web but uses IP is still the Internet.
  • TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
    It might not have been a toy in the Fisher-Price sense of the word, but in 1998 it was only a couple of years into the mainstream, and had a long history of being the preserve of geeks and hobbyists. Big business was only just starting to take it seriously, and even then, not particularly so.
• irrational 7y ago
  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.
  • a_f 7y ago
    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?
• tim333 7y ago
  >The Internet was being widely written off as a toy There was a definite split in opinion with some writing it off as a toy and some smart and informed people thinking it the next big thing (eg Gates https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0526bill-gates-internet-memo/ https://www.wired.com/2010/05/0526bill-gates-internet-memo/)
• Smithalicious 7y ago
  > 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.