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Here we go again: another poor deluded soul who believes that today's social networking toys are comparable with the truly revolutionary technological advances

Here we go again: another poor deluded soul who believes that today's social networking toys are comparable with the truly revolutionary technological advances of the past, such as the early electric appliances and the automobile.

run4yourlives 17y ago
Amen to that. Today is also a lot like the late 1990's. :-)
DannoHung 17y ago
Social networking toys? What, you mean smartphones, integrated GPS, augmented reality, robotics, pervasive communications networks. None of these advances strike you as important and potentially disruptive?
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  Relative though. There's cell phone to iphone levels of disruption to the norm, and then there is kitchen sink to washing machine levels of disruption. If you look at tech, a comparable time period to the 20's would be the late 80's early 90's, where we went from basically the industrial age to the information age in a matter of years. What's happening now is nowhere close to the same scale.
  - mixmax 17y ago
    What's happening now is the commoditization of the tech that started gaining traction in the early 90's. Speaking from a macroeconomic standpoint this is where all the fun is.
    - run4yourlives 17y ago
      Depends on how you define fun, and where you sit. All the "fun" stuff from the 80's and 90's has turned into companies like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Motorola. Their founders have been living what I'm sure they would consider "fun" lives for quite a while. :-)
      - mixmax 17y ago
        What I meant by fun was higher productivity, better utilisation of resources, rise in GDP based on innovation and that sort of stuff. What is fun to one is, well something else, to another. :-)
    - bsaunder 17y ago
      It's not just the commoditization, but our efficiency. Searching for information is oodles easier (to use a technical term ;) than it has been (say pre-google/wikipedia). Furthermore, on-line communities like HN filter up all of the more interesting new pieces of information resulting in much quicker dissemination of good ideas.
nostrademons 17y ago
Social networking toys are comparable with the electrical toys of the 1920s and 30s, most of which have been forgotten. It's the Internet that is comparable with electricity, and companies like EBay or Google that are comparable with the early electric appliances that we remember.
burke 17y ago
We have palm-sized devices that can provide you turn-by-turn directions to friend's house, while streaming music over a (semi-)pervasive data network, and keeping you in constant communication with everyone you know (eg. IM, etc.). They can continuously update a map with your location, for all to see, and query what more or less amounts to a global intelligence for information on pretty much anything. Remember the hitchhiker's guide? The thing that was complete fiction in the '70s? We've developed methods to selectively suppress gene expression (RNAi), which is already paving the way to new disease treatments and cures, and even more effective genetic manipulations. Maybe soon we'll be able to completely change our genetic makeup with a designer virus. Transistors are now only a few atoms thick, and still growing smaller. We've finally discovered the memristor, which should provide even more complex circuits at a fraction of the size (memristors are physically less complex than transistors) -- we're configuring components at an atomic level. How can you seriously claim that today's technological progress doesn't stand up to that of the 1920's? Consider my mind boggled.
- hypertame 17y ago
  > How can you seriously claim that today's technological progress doesn't stand up to that of the 1920's? Consider my mind boggled. Penicillin. I mean, we're measuring by how much it improved quality of life, no?

run4yourlives 17y ago

Amen to that. Today is also a lot like the late 1990's. :-)

DannoHung 17y ago

Social networking toys? What, you mean smartphones, integrated GPS, augmented reality, robotics, pervasive communications networks. None of these advances strike you as important and potentially disruptive?

run4yourlives 17y ago
Relative though. There's cell phone to iphone levels of disruption to the norm, and then there is kitchen sink to washing machine levels of disruption. If you look at tech, a comparable time period to the 20's would be the late 80's early 90's, where we went from basically the industrial age to the information age in a matter of years. What's happening now is nowhere close to the same scale.
- mixmax 17y ago
  What's happening now is the commoditization of the tech that started gaining traction in the early 90's. Speaking from a macroeconomic standpoint this is where all the fun is.
  - run4yourlives 17y ago
    Depends on how you define fun, and where you sit. All the "fun" stuff from the 80's and 90's has turned into companies like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Motorola. Their founders have been living what I'm sure they would consider "fun" lives for quite a while. :-)
    - mixmax 17y ago
      What I meant by fun was higher productivity, better utilisation of resources, rise in GDP based on innovation and that sort of stuff. What is fun to one is, well something else, to another. :-)
  - bsaunder 17y ago
    It's not just the commoditization, but our efficiency. Searching for information is oodles easier (to use a technical term ;) than it has been (say pre-google/wikipedia). Furthermore, on-line communities like HN filter up all of the more interesting new pieces of information resulting in much quicker dissemination of good ideas.

nostrademons 17y ago

Social networking toys are comparable with the electrical toys of the 1920s and 30s, most of which have been forgotten. It's the Internet that is comparable with electricity, and companies like EBay or Google that are comparable with the early electric appliances that we remember.

burke 17y ago

We have palm-sized devices that can provide you turn-by-turn directions to friend's house, while streaming music over a (semi-)pervasive data network, and keeping you in constant communication with everyone you know (eg. IM, etc.). They can continuously update a map with your location, for all to see, and query what more or less amounts to a global intelligence for information on pretty much anything. Remember the hitchhiker's guide? The thing that was complete fiction in the '70s? We've developed methods to selectively suppress gene expression (RNAi), which is already paving the way to new disease treatments and cures, and even more effective genetic manipulations. Maybe soon we'll be able to completely change our genetic makeup with a designer virus. Transistors are now only a few atoms thick, and still growing smaller. We've finally discovered the memristor, which should provide even more complex circuits at a fraction of the size (memristors are physically less complex than transistors) -- we're configuring components at an atomic level. How can you seriously claim that today's technological progress doesn't stand up to that of the 1920's? Consider my mind boggled.

hypertame 17y ago
> How can you seriously claim that today's technological progress doesn't stand up to that of the 1920's? Consider my mind boggled. Penicillin. I mean, we're measuring by how much it improved quality of life, no?