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Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by AndrewDucker on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @09:58AM (#14603827)
Look back 20 years to 1997. Before Windows 2000 brought together the home and server codebases. Before the internet was available on mobile phones. Heck, back then the internet was used by less than 2% of the global population.

What was 20 years ahead of its time then? What would you have looked at and thought "That'll be massive in 20 years"?

About the only thing I can think of is VR. Which Sega tried to launch in the late 90s, and only now is selling over a million units.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by ams6110 on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:32AM (#14604111)
Many of the web startups in the late 1990s had good ideas but were about 20 years too early.

A lot of things that have succeeded today were tried then and failed either because the technology couldn't scale, or the bandwidth wasn't there, or because people just weren't ready for it.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by rjsw on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:41AM (#14604176)
I worked for two startups in the 1980s that were doing online hypertext and searching multiple online databases.

Failure reasons were the ones you list plus lack of TCP/IP provision.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by kyriakos on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @01:41PM (#14606098)
How many social media companies did it take before Facebook got it 'right'?
Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by SideburnsOfDoom on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:14AM (#14603945)
> What would you have looked at and thought "That'll be massive in 20 years"

I was on the internet in the early/mid 90s, and was told that "the web" was growing massively and was going to be huge. This was more common knowledge by 1997.

The kind of DNA sequencing that 23andme sells to people for £150 now? It's not "millions of units" massive yet, granted.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by jrm5100 on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:28AM (#14604079)
It may be millions of units by now- it was 1M about 2 years ago (https://www.genomeweb.com/microarrays-multiplexing/1m-custom...).

Minor nitpicking: the 23andMe kits use microarrays for genotyping, not DNA sequencing. It's an older and more limited technology but it is much cheaper than sequencing.

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by qw on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:39AM (#14604165)
20 years ago I read about software as a service. The idea was that everyone would use thin clients and run graphical applications remotely. The idea was not new, as it is similar to the mainframes of the past.

The infrastructure and technology was not quite there 20 years ago, but we are getting close with today's cloud and webapps

Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by pvg on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:37AM (#14604143)
VR is not exactly massive now.
Re:Ask HN: What projects are 20 years ahead of their time? by Aron on Wednesday June 21, 2017 @10:02PM (#14609603)
Amazon