3 ms·
When computers first came out and you found out about the internet, you might have wanted one. And you could say, hey, that's awesome, but at most, I can chat a
by iamwil 14y ago
When computers first came out and you found out about the internet, you might have wanted one. And you could say, hey, that's awesome, but at most, I can chat and email with other nerds. I can't figure out what else I'd do with it. I don't think anyone could have predicted twitter, facebook, and wikipedia back in 1980's.
Same with mobile phones. I remember when they came out in the 90's, the common use case cited was that when you walked by, starbucks would message you a coupon based on your location based services, or that you can leave location based messages for people to discover, like a cache-box. Turns out, people want to instagram, foursquare, and uber.
I think it is the same with a 3D printer. People often cite that you can replace parts around your home. Or other people might say it's only for makers and tinkerers. I don't think that'll be the main use case. It's so new that we can only make analogies of what we'd do with it. But in actuality, it would probably enable new kinds of behavior.
- shabble 14y agopretty sure the major selling point of mobile phones was to have a phone, that was mobile. They existed in various forms before the 90s, but were far too bulky and expensive for popular use; it was the reduction in those factors which resulted in the original uptake wave. Not to mention that they were backwards compatible (and useful) even if not everyone had one - they were still able to call/be called from landline phones, albeit expensive.
- iamwil 14y agoI should have been more precise. I should have said smartphones with location-based services, as that was really what I was making the comparison to how people thought its use case was going to be one thing, but it was actually another.