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"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young

by jariel 6y ago

"Back then tech was exciting and new. We were changing the world. Now we have changed the world. Mobile is king, web is emperor. We’ve won." You must be young. The difference between 1999 and 2009 was an order of magnitude greater than 2009 to 2019. This is your personal growth journey, not really an objective thing.

Swizec 6y ago
I started coding in 1995 so yes I know the difference was huge. Reading Hackers reveals that back in 1960 tech was even nerdier still. Professionalization marches on. Exponentially.
- jariel 6y ago
  I think the inflection point was when tech, the valley and the internet itself became mainstream, circa 2000. It came along with millenium hype. Even then only maybe 1/3 of Americans had consistent Internet access, but everyone was talking about it. 'The Matrix' films remember are about hackers. Then the metastasizing with mobile, which really took root post 2010 when even poor people around the globe became connected. I think AI, in the long run, won't be the thing we look at, it will be the internet itself. In 500 years, I wonder if even Television or Radio will be remembered as 'a thing' - they were foundational and transformational, but only for a few decades until the internet took over. The mishmash we have now, may resemble whatever it is we have in 1000 years. Protocols, sources, viewing tech will all change, but I think that it will actually kind of feel similar. It won't have the orthodoxy of 'TV Channels' with 'set program timings' etc..
  - Swizec 6y ago
    Well I’m from Eastern-ish Europe so we were a little behind maybe. We got internet at home in 2001. Before that I’d go to the library to try it out.
cambalache 6y ago
It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.
- refurb 6y ago
  And after reading it you realize the author is ignoring everything that happened before them, but if they did put their own experience in historical context the profoundness of their insights would disappear.
nglx 6y ago
I think peak web was around 2005, when Google was still working, Amazon was non-bloated, personal pages still were easier to find, and medium/wordpress nonsense was scarce. Then the fundamental greed driven changes happened, and here we are with an AOL situation again. So the difference between 2005 (or 2009) and 2019 is greater, and it is for the worse. A lot of programmers are backstabbing and greedy creatures now who pretend to be good but are only after money and power. I'm not talking about startup founders here, it is the corporate programmers who are insufferable now.
- jariel 6y ago
  Yes, 'peak organic html' was about 2005. But this I'm afraid is a little bit of mythology from those who were there at the time, and have/had a certain view of what the 'web ought to be'. In the 'big big picture' - the web blew up between 1995-2005 in the modern world, and then blew up on a much bigger scale with mobile afterwards. US is only 5% of world population. Europe not quite 10%. Our view of 'what the web ought to view' I think has some legit elements, but I'm not sure if they're representative of what real material value is. The world is big. Just the mere presence of the web - in all it's incarnations - is a very powerful thing. It's still roiling and people are still coming online and it's powerful. I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture. If only considering the WWW impacts, then sure. In the physical world, however, it's definitely an important artifact, considering how much it's upended things for brick-and-mortar (at all scales) and the whole supply chain / fulfillment / logistics realm. (And note that "important" should not be taken to mean "beneficial" here; it's already important to the history of these sectors in the same sense that giant asteroids are important to the history of Earth-based life - that is, outright destructive of the current landscape, but might very well result in new opportunities in its wake)

by jariel 6y ago

Swizec 6y ago

I started coding in 1995 so yes I know the difference was huge. Reading Hackers reveals that back in 1960 tech was even nerdier still. Professionalization marches on. Exponentially.

jariel 6y ago
I think the inflection point was when tech, the valley and the internet itself became mainstream, circa 2000. It came along with millenium hype. Even then only maybe 1/3 of Americans had consistent Internet access, but everyone was talking about it. 'The Matrix' films remember are about hackers. Then the metastasizing with mobile, which really took root post 2010 when even poor people around the globe became connected. I think AI, in the long run, won't be the thing we look at, it will be the internet itself. In 500 years, I wonder if even Television or Radio will be remembered as 'a thing' - they were foundational and transformational, but only for a few decades until the internet took over. The mishmash we have now, may resemble whatever it is we have in 1000 years. Protocols, sources, viewing tech will all change, but I think that it will actually kind of feel similar. It won't have the orthodoxy of 'TV Channels' with 'set program timings' etc..
- Swizec 6y ago
  Well I’m from Eastern-ish Europe so we were a little behind maybe. We got internet at home in 2001. Before that I’d go to the library to try it out.

cambalache 6y ago

It's like all those articles you see in Medium :"What life has taught me" They all start like : "In my youth, the US was a very different place, blah blah" Then you scroll down and notice the author is 28 yo at most.

refurb 6y ago
And after reading it you realize the author is ignoring everything that happened before them, but if they did put their own experience in historical context the profoundness of their insights would disappear.

nglx 6y ago

I think peak web was around 2005, when Google was still working, Amazon was non-bloated, personal pages still were easier to find, and medium/wordpress nonsense was scarce. Then the fundamental greed driven changes happened, and here we are with an AOL situation again. So the difference between 2005 (or 2009) and 2019 is greater, and it is for the worse. A lot of programmers are backstabbing and greedy creatures now who pretend to be good but are only after money and power. I'm not talking about startup founders here, it is the corporate programmers who are insufferable now.

jariel 6y ago
Yes, 'peak organic html' was about 2005. But this I'm afraid is a little bit of mythology from those who were there at the time, and have/had a certain view of what the 'web ought to be'. In the 'big big picture' - the web blew up between 1995-2005 in the modern world, and then blew up on a much bigger scale with mobile afterwards. US is only 5% of world population. Europe not quite 10%. Our view of 'what the web ought to view' I think has some legit elements, but I'm not sure if they're representative of what real material value is. The world is big. Just the mere presence of the web - in all it's incarnations - is a very powerful thing. It's still roiling and people are still coming online and it's powerful. I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > I actually don't think Amazon retail (i.e. sans AWS) is an important artifact in the big picture. If only considering the WWW impacts, then sure. In the physical world, however, it's definitely an important artifact, considering how much it's upended things for brick-and-mortar (at all scales) and the whole supply chain / fulfillment / logistics realm. (And note that "important" should not be taken to mean "beneficial" here; it's already important to the history of these sectors in the same sense that giant asteroids are important to the history of Earth-based life - that is, outright destructive of the current landscape, but might very well result in new opportunities in its wake)