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The section "Accidental complexity abounds" and the diagram is reminiscent of a Twitter thread last month: https://twitter.com/gravislizard/status/927593460642

• kbenson 7y ago
  I disliked that twitter thread. It's rife with rose-colored views of the past, and misunderstanding of what they are referring to. The two main ones are a) library computers weren't always fast, and they definitely weren't checking as much data. We're a few orders of magnitude higher in what things are searching, and Amazon is still really fast, and b) Google maps is a very specific use case of mapping, not analogous the general purpose map you would get previously. There are plenty of online trip planning services that do most or all of the interesting stuff that was mentioned. I've used a few of them. The whole thread is analogous to a person that grew up on a farm complaining that their Honda civic doesn't deal with rough terrains as well as the tractor on the farm they grew up on did, to which the only response is either duh or no shit sherlock, depending on how charitable you're feeling.