5 ms·

I really don't remember tech people poo-pooing some of the examples you gave as "couldn't you..." I think you're looking at these examples with too fine a lens

by allenu 5y ago

I really don't remember tech people poo-pooing some of the examples you gave as "couldn't you..." I think you're looking at these examples with too fine a lens of implementation, especially in retrospect. the web: I was a teen when people started using local "freenets" to connect to a text-only web and I think most people who tried it were amazed that you could instantly view content somebody on the other side of the world put up blogs: I suppose "blogging platforms" were things you could say "couldn't you update a web page" but I think it was clear that what they provided was network effects you couldn't get from just your own web page and easy styling wikis: I remember the idea being amazing because you could edit the page without having to sign in or create an account. That's not something you could just do with "updating a web page" youtube: it was amazing that you could easily stream videos for free and search them. There was also a ton of copyright stuff in the early days. Really, a better way to look at whether a technology is worth paying attention to is to ask "what can this allow us to do more easily that we couldn't before?"

geebee 5y ago
I agree. These are examples of things I initially dismissed, in part because I thought didn’t see how they addressed the minor factors that were holding back a sudden and widespread adoption. And yeah, I think there is a technical element to this and I do recall technical people puzzled about how popular web pages in a browser had become (seeing it as an unusually limited interface). Not all though, for all I know this was an unusual perspective even among technically savvy people. I suppose the people who saw the possibility and could act in it were both technical but capable of seeing things outside that narrow lense. Also remember I wrote these as examples of things I reasoned incorrectly about! EDIT - re-reading my comment above, I see I did write "technical people" rather than "me". I'm sure I'm not at all alone in having this tendency, but I'm definitely not ready to defend the idea that this is a universal or even common tendency among technical people. Perhaps I should have written "when I find myself thinking "couldn't you just""...
munk-a 5y ago
For blogs in particular - this came after both geocities and livejournal. Folks had the ability to host their own websites with relative ease and to write a post history that other folks could subscribe and comment on. Blogging as a verb and Blogs as a noun really came into their own when folks decided that this sort of journal was a common enough task (and shared hosts like live journal lacked enough features) that software to easily throw together a stream of articles had common value. That is, at least, if my knowledge of the series of events is off. Livejournal existing is about when I got into the web but that predated blogs (and particularly bloggers in the context of investigative journalism) becoming a term by quite a fair bit.
- allenu 5y ago
  I think you're right about the timeline. I do remember livejournal being around before Blogger, which is around when "blogging" became a term. I remember getting into a few people's web-based online diaries in the late '90s and definitely some folks used geocities to host their journals. I remember using it myself to post whatever nonsense I was doing to share with friends.
  - jaredsohn 5y ago
    You could use the finger command on users and read their .plan files even earlier than that. Quake developers were famous for those. https://fabiensanglard.net/fd_proxy/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1999.pdf https://fabiensanglard.net/fd_proxy/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_19...
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Thanks, I was looking for this comment. Most of the examples he gave just seem like absolute straw men to me: > The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it? Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate. > Wikis: couldn't you just update a web page? It was pretty obviously apparent with wikis that letting anyone update the page, from the browser, was a cool technological achievement. I was well into my tech career at this point and don't remember anyone reacting to wikis this way. > youtube: couldn't you just upload a video and use tags for search? I mean, these are getting ridiculous. When YouTube came out video sharing was a major PITA, a pain that hit most technical people, too. I just don't buy GP's premise because all of the examples seem like something only "Tech Support Guy" from those old SNL skits would say.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > > The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it? > Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate. I don't get why we're even talking about it. The original example is nonsense. The web literally does what that example says - pushes byte streams to computers that use a rendering tool to view them. Arguably, what made the web popular wasn't HTTP per se. The two core ingredients were, in my opinion, DNS infrastructure and that "rendering tool", AKA. web browser. Together, they made it easy to publish files and let random people access them. Arguably, the third leg would be the <A> tag in early HTML, which kept everything glued together while it expanded exponentially.
mikewarot 5y ago
>youtube: it was amazing that you could easily stream videos for free and search them. There was also a ton of copyright stuff in the early days. Hosting videos back then required plugins on the part of the viewer, which was something we were all cautioned not to download because of security.... Youtube was the first site that broke through the ice and had enough content to start taking advantage of network effects, and didn't blow that lead.
hangsi 5y ago
A somewhat HN-famous example of the "couldn't you..." sentiment would be this from the debut of Dropbox ("couldn't you just use ftp"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

by allenu 5y ago

geebee 5y ago

I agree. These are examples of things I initially dismissed, in part because I thought didn’t see how they addressed the minor factors that were holding back a sudden and widespread adoption. And yeah, I think there is a technical element to this and I do recall technical people puzzled about how popular web pages in a browser had become (seeing it as an unusually limited interface). Not all though, for all I know this was an unusual perspective even among technically savvy people. I suppose the people who saw the possibility and could act in it were both technical but capable of seeing things outside that narrow lense. Also remember I wrote these as examples of things I reasoned incorrectly about! EDIT - re-reading my comment above, I see I did write "technical people" rather than "me". I'm sure I'm not at all alone in having this tendency, but I'm definitely not ready to defend the idea that this is a universal or even common tendency among technical people. Perhaps I should have written "when I find myself thinking "couldn't you just""...

munk-a 5y ago

For blogs in particular - this came after both geocities and livejournal. Folks had the ability to host their own websites with relative ease and to write a post history that other folks could subscribe and comment on. Blogging as a verb and Blogs as a noun really came into their own when folks decided that this sort of journal was a common enough task (and shared hosts like live journal lacked enough features) that software to easily throw together a stream of articles had common value. That is, at least, if my knowledge of the series of events is off. Livejournal existing is about when I got into the web but that predated blogs (and particularly bloggers in the context of investigative journalism) becoming a term by quite a fair bit.

allenu 5y ago
I think you're right about the timeline. I do remember livejournal being around before Blogger, which is around when "blogging" became a term. I remember getting into a few people's web-based online diaries in the late '90s and definitely some folks used geocities to host their journals. I remember using it myself to post whatever nonsense I was doing to share with friends.
- jaredsohn 5y ago
  You could use the finger command on users and read their .plan files even earlier than that. Quake developers were famous for those. https://fabiensanglard.net/fd_proxy/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1999.pdf https://fabiensanglard.net/fd_proxy/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_19...

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

Thanks, I was looking for this comment. Most of the examples he gave just seem like absolute straw men to me: > The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it? Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate. > Wikis: couldn't you just update a web page? It was pretty obviously apparent with wikis that letting anyone update the page, from the browser, was a cool technological achievement. I was well into my tech career at this point and don't remember anyone reacting to wikis this way. > youtube: couldn't you just upload a video and use tags for search? I mean, these are getting ridiculous. When YouTube came out video sharing was a major PITA, a pain that hit most technical people, too. I just don't buy GP's premise because all of the examples seem like something only "Tech Support Guy" from those old SNL skits would say.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> > The web: couldn't you just transfer a file to an open port and use a rendering tool to view it? > Did anyone actually ever say this? The web was clearly a technological advancement that most tech people realized out of the gate. I don't get why we're even talking about it. The original example is nonsense. The web literally does what that example says - pushes byte streams to computers that use a rendering tool to view them. Arguably, what made the web popular wasn't HTTP per se. The two core ingredients were, in my opinion, DNS infrastructure and that "rendering tool", AKA. web browser. Together, they made it easy to publish files and let random people access them. Arguably, the third leg would be the <A> tag in early HTML, which kept everything glued together while it expanded exponentially.

mikewarot 5y ago

>youtube: it was amazing that you could easily stream videos for free and search them. There was also a ton of copyright stuff in the early days. Hosting videos back then required plugins on the part of the viewer, which was something we were all cautioned not to download because of security.... Youtube was the first site that broke through the ice and had enough content to start taking advantage of network effects, and didn't blow that lead.

hangsi 5y ago

A somewhat HN-famous example of the "couldn't you..." sentiment would be this from the debut of Dropbox ("couldn't you just use ftp"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224