4 ms·

Well, 10y ago is not ages ago. Email existed for 30 years before it was ready for consumers. Same is with the internet. Certain types of technologies require de

by mirzap 5y ago

Well, 10y ago is not ages ago. Email existed for 30 years before it was ready for consumers. Same is with the internet. Certain types of technologies require decades research and development. I would argue that in 20 years it will still be "early days" of blockchain. And only in mid 40 we will figure out apps and who nows what to fully utilize underlining technology. Right now we are just coping what we have outside of blockchain and put it on the blockchain. Same as people couldn't imagine how internet could possibly transform their business and life, we now can't imagine how Bitcoin and blockchain will transform our business and life in the future. It's too early.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
Email required everyone to have a computer, plus infrastructure to connect them. Blockchain has been waiting on a useful implementation since inception.
- mirzap 5y ago
  No. Email didn't have useful implementation (UI) until 30y after it was invented. Only geeks and tech savy people were able to use it because it was not so easy to use. Sending messages was really hard, sending would often fail. So you would say, 25y after email inception there was no useful implementation and no usage by consumers, so technology is worthless. And there were people who were saying that, I'm sure. Same was with the internet.
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    Until 1998, my middle class American family didn’t have internet. I was a rather tech-curious kid, but until we actually had a second phone line run to our house and a new Gateway computer and a modem, there was this huge barrier to what I could learn about on our airgapped Windows 3.1 machine. My Dad was able to navigate the command line because he’d needed to on our previous DOS computer, so I feel like he could’ve handled email if we’d had a connection back then. I’d argue that infrastructure was a pretty big barrier to email catching on, not just the UI.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      I totally agree. We got the Internet in the mid-90s and by that point all the utility was totally obvious. Even using services like Wireplay for online gaming showed the potential very clearly. As you note adoption of the Internet is way more tied up in adoption of home computing and the exponential expansion of that. It was a pre-requisite. Blockchain tech on the other hand has no pre-requisites blocking adoption, just no use cases. All this “it’s too early” talk never says why.
      - mirzap 5y ago
        This is false. You can google what people said about internet in early days. Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet) said: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse" So people really didn't see potential in early days of internet, except small minority of people. We see same happening now with Bitcoin and blockchain. In 30y someone will point into some (now small) project and say "people saw potential very early, just look at projectX which demonstrated that potential quite clearly".
        meheleventyone 5y ago
        I was giving my own opinion so it by definition can’t be false. You also quote a single person and present that as general sentiment. Can you show definitively that was broadly shared? You’re also not really addressing the factual point made which was that Internet adoption had the pre-requisite of home computer adoption. Whereas there doesn’t seem to be such a stumbling block for blockchain tech.
        jakupovic 5y ago
        >was giving my own opinion so it by definition can’t be false. This statement is false and therefore your opinion could be false. Example, in your opinion white bread is the best, I think wheat bread is the best. Are you right, just because you believe it and said so? Obviously we both cannot be right. But to us, you and I, the statements are true.
onion2k 5y ago
we now can't imagine how Bitcoin and blockchain will transform our business and life in the future 40 years ago people on the cutting edge of tech had VHS video recorders to record broadcast TV. The tech grew slowly, became the dominant standard, and after 15 years in the mid-90s they were everywhere. 25 years later no one has one, or wants one, or even has an equivalent. Don't assume too much about the future based on the present. Things can change in strange and unexpected ways. I'm not saying Bitcoin and blockchain won't be around in 2040. They may well be. I'm saying current trends aren't a particularly good predictor of the future. They're wrong more often than they're right.
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
I'd say with email the application was always crystal clear: It's like sending a letter, but electronically and therefore instantly. This must have been obvious to everyone in that space even 40 years ago. Maybe it wasn't obvious how big email would be one day, but there were definitely no doubts about what it would be used for. As someone who is trying to understand the applications of "crypto", it is very frustrating to hear stuff like "we now can't imagine how Bitcoin and blockchain will transform our business and life in the future". Please give me something! If we can't imagine it, maybe there is nothing there.
- jakupovic 5y ago
  Email is also used for authentication, all those 6 digit codes that come in for 2fa are doing so. Definitely not something that was imagined 40 years go.
  - kingofspain 5y ago
    Not too dissimilar to getting your bank card and PIN in separate letters. Just much, much quicker.
- runeks 5y ago
  The application of Bitcoin is also crystal clear: distributed, digital money. It’s like gold, but electronic, and therefore much faster/cheaper in certain scenarios (and slower/more expensive in others). Reasonable people disagree on whether this application is actually something we need, or will need in the future. But the application is clear as day.
  - redytedy 5y ago
    Except for that you can't take a bar of gold and view a public log of every wallet/transaction it has ever been in. Something like Monero would be better for your analogy.
mojuba 5y ago
It might be that the idea is too complex to be viable or useful. The graveyard of technologies created in the past decades stretches to the horizon, so if something doesn't work after 10 years doesn't mean it will work in the future. This is kind of obvious. Specifically with blockchain my intuition is that, if its main selling points - immutability and decentralization - are already invalidated in the early days (10 years that is), the chances that it will recover are slim. Complex tech tends to centralize to become cheaper. Also immutability is very problematic in terms of the right-to-forget and also in terms of illegal content and illegal operations. Email's purpose and utility was super-obvious from day one, we just had to figure out how to make it more secure. Notice how email too became centralized, however.

by mirzap 5y ago

unityByFreedom 5y ago

Email required everyone to have a computer, plus infrastructure to connect them. Blockchain has been waiting on a useful implementation since inception.

mirzap 5y ago
No. Email didn't have useful implementation (UI) until 30y after it was invented. Only geeks and tech savy people were able to use it because it was not so easy to use. Sending messages was really hard, sending would often fail. So you would say, 25y after email inception there was no useful implementation and no usage by consumers, so technology is worthless. And there were people who were saying that, I'm sure. Same was with the internet.
- Uehreka 5y ago
  Until 1998, my middle class American family didn’t have internet. I was a rather tech-curious kid, but until we actually had a second phone line run to our house and a new Gateway computer and a modem, there was this huge barrier to what I could learn about on our airgapped Windows 3.1 machine. My Dad was able to navigate the command line because he’d needed to on our previous DOS computer, so I feel like he could’ve handled email if we’d had a connection back then. I’d argue that infrastructure was a pretty big barrier to email catching on, not just the UI.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    I totally agree. We got the Internet in the mid-90s and by that point all the utility was totally obvious. Even using services like Wireplay for online gaming showed the potential very clearly. As you note adoption of the Internet is way more tied up in adoption of home computing and the exponential expansion of that. It was a pre-requisite. Blockchain tech on the other hand has no pre-requisites blocking adoption, just no use cases. All this “it’s too early” talk never says why.
    - mirzap 5y ago
      This is false. You can google what people said about internet in early days. Robert Metcalfe (the inventor of Ethernet) said: "I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse" So people really didn't see potential in early days of internet, except small minority of people. We see same happening now with Bitcoin and blockchain. In 30y someone will point into some (now small) project and say "people saw potential very early, just look at projectX which demonstrated that potential quite clearly".
      - meheleventyone 5y ago
        I was giving my own opinion so it by definition can’t be false. You also quote a single person and present that as general sentiment. Can you show definitively that was broadly shared? You’re also not really addressing the factual point made which was that Internet adoption had the pre-requisite of home computer adoption. Whereas there doesn’t seem to be such a stumbling block for blockchain tech.
        jakupovic 5y ago
        >was giving my own opinion so it by definition can’t be false. This statement is false and therefore your opinion could be false. Example, in your opinion white bread is the best, I think wheat bread is the best. Are you right, just because you believe it and said so? Obviously we both cannot be right. But to us, you and I, the statements are true.

onion2k 5y ago

we now can't imagine how Bitcoin and blockchain will transform our business and life in the future 40 years ago people on the cutting edge of tech had VHS video recorders to record broadcast TV. The tech grew slowly, became the dominant standard, and after 15 years in the mid-90s they were everywhere. 25 years later no one has one, or wants one, or even has an equivalent. Don't assume too much about the future based on the present. Things can change in strange and unexpected ways. I'm not saying Bitcoin and blockchain won't be around in 2040. They may well be. I'm saying current trends aren't a particularly good predictor of the future. They're wrong more often than they're right.

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago

I'd say with email the application was always crystal clear: It's like sending a letter, but electronically and therefore instantly. This must have been obvious to everyone in that space even 40 years ago. Maybe it wasn't obvious how big email would be one day, but there were definitely no doubts about what it would be used for. As someone who is trying to understand the applications of "crypto", it is very frustrating to hear stuff like "we now can't imagine how Bitcoin and blockchain will transform our business and life in the future". Please give me something! If we can't imagine it, maybe there is nothing there.

jakupovic 5y ago
Email is also used for authentication, all those 6 digit codes that come in for 2fa are doing so. Definitely not something that was imagined 40 years go.
- kingofspain 5y ago
  Not too dissimilar to getting your bank card and PIN in separate letters. Just much, much quicker.
runeks 5y ago
The application of Bitcoin is also crystal clear: distributed, digital money. It’s like gold, but electronic, and therefore much faster/cheaper in certain scenarios (and slower/more expensive in others). Reasonable people disagree on whether this application is actually something we need, or will need in the future. But the application is clear as day.
- redytedy 5y ago
  Except for that you can't take a bar of gold and view a public log of every wallet/transaction it has ever been in. Something like Monero would be better for your analogy.

mojuba 5y ago

It might be that the idea is too complex to be viable or useful. The graveyard of technologies created in the past decades stretches to the horizon, so if something doesn't work after 10 years doesn't mean it will work in the future. This is kind of obvious. Specifically with blockchain my intuition is that, if its main selling points - immutability and decentralization - are already invalidated in the early days (10 years that is), the chances that it will recover are slim. Complex tech tends to centralize to become cheaper. Also immutability is very problematic in terms of the right-to-forget and also in terms of illegal content and illegal operations. Email's purpose and utility was super-obvious from day one, we just had to figure out how to make it more secure. Notice how email too became centralized, however.