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> It seems the least accurate parts of predictions like these are always the parts that would require billions in infrastructure changes or new construction. T
by lutusp 14y ago
> It seems the least accurate parts of predictions like these are always the parts that would require billions in infrastructure changes or new construction.
There are also the predictions that are never made because they would require "billions in infrastructure changes or new construction", like the Internet, which no one predicted.
- polshaw 14y agoThe difference is that projects like the internet were incremental. At no single point did it require "Billions in infrastructure"; to start it basically required just a couple of modems (which aren't fundamentally complex) and it ran off the existing POTS lines. It could grow organically, unlike major construction works.
- lutusp 14y ago> The difference is that projects like the internet were incremental. That's the funny part -- one could argue that, because it was incremental, someone ought to have seen what was coming. But instead it was much like the early days of television -- the experts thought it was a gimmick, a fad that people would get tired of, then return to radio and printed matter.
- petercooper 14y agoThis also seems true of most successful "startups" which rarely blow up overnight but build incrementally over years (e.g. Skype, Pinterest, Google, Facebook, GitHub, FeedBurner.. vs Cuil, Color, and other "next big thing" flash in a pans)
- ivix 14y agoOr mobile phones (and network of 1000s of towers) for everyone up to and including a goat herder in botswana. When the mass market gets a hold of something, we can move mountains.