45 ms·

What technology has come out in the last decade that isn't an increment or miniaturization?

prepend 4y ago
The revolution we Ade still in is the transistor and it started 60 years ago and probably has 40 years left to go.
blantonl 4y ago
I would argue that the mobile communications device called the "iPhone" is one of the most significant technology innovations developed in the past 100 years. Love it, hate it, whatever, but it completely revolutionized what is practically access to "everything". You will be hard pressed to find an American consumer, from the richest guy to homeless people on the street that don't have a mobile communications device on their person with a touch screen and instant access to the collective works of the world. The iPhone by itself as a stand alone business would be larger than Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds among other revolutionary businesses.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The iPhone is 15 years old, so it wasn't in the last decade.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    No. But ubiquity and smartphones being just part of the fabric of everyday life comes pretty close to squeezing into the last decade. I didn't have one until probably 2011 (iPhone 3GS) and I'm not really a technology laggard.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The always on always online computer in your pocket changed things for sure - and perhaps it was the Internet finally coming into its own. Maybe (maybe) ChatGPT will do something similarly transformative (I’m sus as the kids say).
      - ghaff 4y ago
        From the perspective of today, the dot-com era wasn't really that different from before from the perspective of consumers. OK, e-commerce was gearing up but it's not like we didn't have mail order catalogs before. Many of us had feature phones but didn't use them a lot; you were mostly still tethered to a desktop of maybe laptop. Online information could still be pretty sparse for many things. Not really any streaming entertainment. Etc.
- diatone 4y ago
  Not a great answer for the GP though. Last ten years? Maybe something in deep learning.
- ghaff 4y ago
  It's not just the iPhone/smartphone. If you showed me just the device in 2005, I'd probably have been "OK. Cool. But how well does it work without a keyboard?" And, in fact, I had a Treo in 2006 and didn't buy an iPhone until around 2010 or so. What was really game changing was the whole app ecosystem and universality of mobile. And that wasn't really in place until maybe close to ten years ago. LLMs/generative AI could be game changing although I'm somewhere on the fence between this year's hype and this will change everything. Autonomous driving could be pretty radical as well but it would have to be pretty general purpose and that doesn't seem close to reality.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  IPhone was 2007, 16 years ago, which is more than the decade the OP asked for.
- jabradoodle 4y ago
  LG Prada predates iPhone and the form factor we have in phones is almost an inevitable outcome. The iPhone was a great execution and ahead of it's time, if you think it is the reason we have smartphones then you couldn't be more wrong.
mellosouls 4y ago
GPT! We are in a transformative moment right now with GPT3 onwards, as great as anything in the computer era.
- ghaff 4y ago
  While possible, I'm not ready to put all my chips on that particular bet yet.
  - tsunamifury 4y ago
    Hacker news in the iPhone launch was a riot.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  Agreed that AI is transformative. That this for kids they grew up with the internet is their epoch moment that those of us they saw the internet come already had. However… I don’t think it counts exactly. When you look at the trillions that have been dumped into basically “ take the best and brightest in the world, and then get them to increase advertising performance by 1% a year” and the money effort and time put into AI, thst the big players were caught completely off guard by AI, it’s more of a mistake than an organic technology evolution. Other than AI, what seriously happened in the last decade? Where in terms of user product has tech innovated?
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It's just "boring plumbing" but software server infrastructure (containers, Kubernetes, and everything cloud-native associated) has basically competely changed in the last 10 years.
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      Being able to rent computers by the hour was definitely a big change.
      - 4y ago
russ 4y ago
Might be just over a decade, but how about the Oculus Rift DK1?
MajimasEyepatch 4y ago
mRNA vaccines are a huge deal. I don’t think it would be fair to call them incremental.
badpun 4y ago
Fracking? Might be slightly older than last decade though.

The revolution we Ade still in is the transistor and it started 60 years ago and probably has 40 years left to go.

I would argue that the mobile communications device called the "iPhone" is one of the most significant technology innovations developed in the past 100 years. Love it, hate it, whatever, but it completely revolutionized what is practically access to "everything". You will be hard pressed to find an American consumer, from the richest guy to homeless people on the street that don't have a mobile communications device on their person with a touch screen and instant access to the collective works of the world. The iPhone by itself as a stand alone business would be larger than Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and McDonalds among other revolutionary businesses.

bombcar 4y ago
The iPhone is 15 years old, so it wasn't in the last decade.
- ghaff 4y ago
  No. But ubiquity and smartphones being just part of the fabric of everyday life comes pretty close to squeezing into the last decade. I didn't have one until probably 2011 (iPhone 3GS) and I'm not really a technology laggard.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The always on always online computer in your pocket changed things for sure - and perhaps it was the Internet finally coming into its own. Maybe (maybe) ChatGPT will do something similarly transformative (I’m sus as the kids say).
    - ghaff 4y ago
      From the perspective of today, the dot-com era wasn't really that different from before from the perspective of consumers. OK, e-commerce was gearing up but it's not like we didn't have mail order catalogs before. Many of us had feature phones but didn't use them a lot; you were mostly still tethered to a desktop of maybe laptop. Online information could still be pretty sparse for many things. Not really any streaming entertainment. Etc.
diatone 4y ago
Not a great answer for the GP though. Last ten years? Maybe something in deep learning.
ghaff 4y ago
It's not just the iPhone/smartphone. If you showed me just the device in 2005, I'd probably have been "OK. Cool. But how well does it work without a keyboard?" And, in fact, I had a Treo in 2006 and didn't buy an iPhone until around 2010 or so. What was really game changing was the whole app ecosystem and universality of mobile. And that wasn't really in place until maybe close to ten years ago. LLMs/generative AI could be game changing although I'm somewhere on the fence between this year's hype and this will change everything. Autonomous driving could be pretty radical as well but it would have to be pretty general purpose and that doesn't seem close to reality.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
IPhone was 2007, 16 years ago, which is more than the decade the OP asked for.
jabradoodle 4y ago
LG Prada predates iPhone and the form factor we have in phones is almost an inevitable outcome. The iPhone was a great execution and ahead of it's time, if you think it is the reason we have smartphones then you couldn't be more wrong.

mellosouls 4y ago

GPT! We are in a transformative moment right now with GPT3 onwards, as great as anything in the computer era.

ghaff 4y ago
While possible, I'm not ready to put all my chips on that particular bet yet.
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  Hacker news in the iPhone launch was a riot.
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
Agreed that AI is transformative. That this for kids they grew up with the internet is their epoch moment that those of us they saw the internet come already had. However… I don’t think it counts exactly. When you look at the trillions that have been dumped into basically “ take the best and brightest in the world, and then get them to increase advertising performance by 1% a year” and the money effort and time put into AI, thst the big players were caught completely off guard by AI, it’s more of a mistake than an organic technology evolution. Other than AI, what seriously happened in the last decade? Where in terms of user product has tech innovated?
- ghaff 4y ago
  It's just "boring plumbing" but software server infrastructure (containers, Kubernetes, and everything cloud-native associated) has basically competely changed in the last 10 years.
  - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
    Being able to rent computers by the hour was definitely a big change.
    - 4y ago

russ 4y ago

Might be just over a decade, but how about the Oculus Rift DK1?

MajimasEyepatch 4y ago

mRNA vaccines are a huge deal. I don’t think it would be fair to call them incremental.

badpun 4y ago

Fracking? Might be slightly older than last decade though.