4 ms·

Is it just me or are 99% of tech "news" and "innovation" just reinvention of stuff already found in UNIX, Lisp etc. decades ago?

• nkassis 16y ago
  It's not just you. Every new thing that's any good is usually a retake on something already though about in the early computer times. But some of the implementation back then were crude. With the reinvention there is usually a rethinking and polishing.
• ugh 16y ago
  No need for the quotation marks. It’s news because you can’t do it with out-of-the-box OS X right now. It’s not innovation (the UI might be, I don’t know) but the article doesn’t claim it is. Technology, however beautiful, often doesn’t matter if many people are unable to use it. It’s news when said technology might become more accessible in the future.
• iuguy 16y ago
  It's not new. The way I see it is as in the film industry, it's a reboot. It's shinier, it may lack the depth and revelation of the original, but what it lacks in that area it makes up for in special effects and ease of consumption. Consider Sendmail vs Exim, or Tron vs Tron:Legacy. Both are essentially the same thing, but one is infinitely easier on the eye.
• noonespecial 16y ago
  It more or less all started with Doug Engelbart giving the "mother of all Demos" in 1968. It's all been catch-up since that event.
• gvb 16y ago
  It's not just you, Henry Spencer reportedly said it (first?) in 1987. "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Spencer#cite_note-2
  • thwarted 16y ago
    He was just paraphrasing the bible: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." -- Ecclesiastes 1:9