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Eloquent. Having lived through the exodus (I stayed) of the dot com crash, it feels a bit like that. Too many people trying to deny the reality that economics i

Eloquent. Having lived through the exodus (I stayed) of the dot com crash, it feels a bit like that. Too many people trying to deny the reality that economics imposes on all things. It really does matter if you buy electricity for 25 cents a kilowatt hour and your net revenue of selling its work product is 20 cents you just can't keep that up. Like the Web 1.0 era, the Web 2.0 era has seen some pretty durable successes. Transactions over the medium are here to stay, they aren't "weird" any more. Your portal to technological offerings is not a "PC" any more, it is an increasingly obviously mislabeled "phone." Margins on communication "services" have been commoditized away and seem unlikely to ever return. I'm looking forward to the next thing, what ever it happens to be. The most fun is always the first third of a wave. The swell, the hint of powerful forces just under the surface waiting to be tapped, the anticipation of successfully getting enough ahead to start the adrenaline fueled ride. Never a dull moment in a place like this.

aeternum 6y ago
I hope the next thing is a renewed focus on the physical world. For the most part, humanity took a break from innovating significantly on transportation, housing, cities, biotech. Our ability to model and simulate the real world has improved exponentially, I'm optimistic about what can come from that. Lots of great minds have been focused purely on software but perhaps the shift back to hardware / physical things is starting.
- AlotOfReading 6y ago
  Some are earlier than others (biotech is already a hot investment market, for instance), but I think we've been there for awhile. Just look at all the self-driving firms, car manufacturers, airbnb/housing startups, and agtech around the Bay.
- Karrot_Kream 6y ago
  Indeed. For all the AI hype, scientific computing has made huge strides forward. Improvements in graphics cards and parallel algorithms have made large simulations and models of all sorts, not just deep learning, much more computationally feasible. I'm very excited to see the applications of all this new scientific computing.
- RestlessMind 6y ago
  > humanity took a break from innovating significantly A lot of advances in SV in the last decade, many of which were derided until recently, have helped us survive the pandemic - video communication (Zoom/Skype/Meet), entertainment (Netflix/HBOMax/Prime), grocery and food delivery (Instacart/PrimeNow/DoorDash/GrubHub), online shopping, Cloud and remote work tools (Office365/AWS/G-Suite and tons of Cloud/SaaS startups) etc. I am thankful for that innovation!
  - burnthrow 6y ago
    On the other hand, these are the tools and spectacles that make such "lock-downs" for a minimally lethal virus politically possible. We are our own jailers and it makes me sick.
- ianai 6y ago
  Hope people realize the connection of power utilization to gdp growth. And that uranium and nuclear in general offer truly astronomical potentials - and the fuel is universal on earths surface.
seibelj 6y ago
The third wave is web 3 brought by decentralized blockchain networks such as Ethereum. Wacky, crazy, interesting stuff is happening in that space, more than any other.
PrefixKitten 6y ago
Auto racing is my prediction.

aeternum 6y ago

I hope the next thing is a renewed focus on the physical world. For the most part, humanity took a break from innovating significantly on transportation, housing, cities, biotech. Our ability to model and simulate the real world has improved exponentially, I'm optimistic about what can come from that. Lots of great minds have been focused purely on software but perhaps the shift back to hardware / physical things is starting.

AlotOfReading 6y ago
Some are earlier than others (biotech is already a hot investment market, for instance), but I think we've been there for awhile. Just look at all the self-driving firms, car manufacturers, airbnb/housing startups, and agtech around the Bay.
Karrot_Kream 6y ago
Indeed. For all the AI hype, scientific computing has made huge strides forward. Improvements in graphics cards and parallel algorithms have made large simulations and models of all sorts, not just deep learning, much more computationally feasible. I'm very excited to see the applications of all this new scientific computing.
RestlessMind 6y ago
> humanity took a break from innovating significantly A lot of advances in SV in the last decade, many of which were derided until recently, have helped us survive the pandemic - video communication (Zoom/Skype/Meet), entertainment (Netflix/HBOMax/Prime), grocery and food delivery (Instacart/PrimeNow/DoorDash/GrubHub), online shopping, Cloud and remote work tools (Office365/AWS/G-Suite and tons of Cloud/SaaS startups) etc. I am thankful for that innovation!
- burnthrow 6y ago
  On the other hand, these are the tools and spectacles that make such "lock-downs" for a minimally lethal virus politically possible. We are our own jailers and it makes me sick.
ianai 6y ago
Hope people realize the connection of power utilization to gdp growth. And that uranium and nuclear in general offer truly astronomical potentials - and the fuel is universal on earths surface.

seibelj 6y ago

The third wave is web 3 brought by decentralized blockchain networks such as Ethereum. Wacky, crazy, interesting stuff is happening in that space, more than any other.

PrefixKitten 6y ago

Auto racing is my prediction.