The one that I dismissed was Twitter. In fact I thought it was a joke when I first heard about it, something making fun of how long winded boring blog posts on services like Livejournal tended to be. I also thought Vine would be doomed to fail.
Uber was not a surprise at all for me because I'd been complaining about the bloated and horrible taxicab system for many years. It was a market that was crying out for disruption. I remember in 2008 my local taxicab company had exactly two ways to hail a cab: phone or fax. They might or might not show up at the appointed time, and they'd certainly never send you any kind of updates. It cost upwards of $5 to step into the cab, and after that there were fees out the wazoo (per 1/6th mile fee, per 45 seconds fee, fee for having a bag, a fuel surcharge, a license surcharge, a regulatory recovery surcharge, and a couple others I forget). The cabs might have credit card readers but they were always broken so it was cash only. Drivers took weirdly roundabout backroads paths and always claimed it was fastest if you asked them about it, even though I knew the highway was not busy at 4am. Every single thing about the experience sucked. When they started crying later that Uber was killing their business my response was "good".
When I moved to the US in 2003, the lack of something like Uber was a surprise.
Not in the smartphone-app sense, of course (those didn't exist yet), but in the sense of regular-Joes-making-a-buck-giving-a-ride sense.
Back in Ukraine, there was no taxicab monopoly. You could hail a ride on the street simply by raising your hand - and someone would pick you up pretty fast. Some people did it for a living, some would use the extra income on the way to/from work if you were going in the same direction (not unlikely if you are standing on a major street going to downtown, for example).
The fares were unregulated and negotiated on the spot, but there was an equilibrium point for every route. (Unless you were a tourist, in which case you'll be almost surely ripped off - nothing any local would care about though).
And, of course, there was no rating system, which took away the incentives for drivers to go out of their way to maintain a nice appearance. Don't like it, don't take the ride; the next car is will stop by a minute later for you, the next passenger will be around the corner for the driver.
Other than the lack of ratings and fixed pricing, this worked like Uber works now in other aspects.
What might be surprising is that central pricing and ratings really don't make ridesharing much different from what I described. It made the system more accepted in the US, but the end result is pretty much the same: I can hail a ride anywhere from people I don't know. The system stabilizes at a price point and expected level of service.
And there's a remarkable similarity in the downsides of this system. My father made some money giving rides back in Ukraine between jobs, and while the short-term revenue looked great (compared to average monthly salaries), so much of it went into gas and maintenance that the whole gig was hardly worth it - and it took more time than a job.
This is what Uber drivers are discovering themselves right now. The ones who took out loans for their shiny cars are especially screwed.
These existed nationwide in the United States in the early days of the 20th century, until about WWII. In many cities they were called "jitneys." Some were organized enough to operate as simple, private, anonymous bus companies with fixed (but flexible) routes.
They started disappearing after WWII when most people outside the urban cores got a car, and municipal governments started taking over public transit.
These still exist in some places, but are mostly in ethnic minority communities and spread by word-of-mouth. (I know first-hand because I got hit head-on by one full of schoolchildren in the late 90's.)
It was initially a carpooling app. The original pitch was that regular drivers would just drive to their own intended location and have an ability to see people on route who wanted to go the same way. Much harder to pick that idea out as a future billion dollar company.
(I was at that conference: everything went wrong, but it was mostly super cold. Cars were stuck in slippery snow, so someone suggesting the idea of carpooling sounds odd, but I suspect anyone there would have loved to wait out the traffic inside a heated car.)
I was using VRBO a decade ago for vacations. AirBnB is more distinguished by a slick UI than business model innovation.
We still don’t know how price sensitive the average Uber customer is.
What surprised me was seeing a serious journalist like Wolf Blitzer regularly reading people's tweets on his prime time show.
“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” - Mencken (paraphrased)
http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-brok...
I still remember finding it strange to see how Ashton and Demi personally wrote short messages, since every form of communication from famous people at the time were formal statements released via the press.
But while it does that, it also plays to something even more deeply human: to watch other people from afar, and to replace complex, anxiety-ridden face-to-face interactions with easier, gentler text-based communication.
Google Glass and all the other hyped techs never struck at anything deeply human. VR is nice and all as a tech, but it's not something we've always done.
VR, virtual reality, is a complete immersion in a virtual world. A 3D game, a 3D movie, a 3D Minecraft, you name it.
AR, augmented reality, is additional "augmented" information in the real world.
VR is nowhere NEAR ready for mass consumer market. There's 2 screens on the glasses with very low resolution. Because the glasses are very much near the eyes, pixels are very apparent. That's ugly. Furthermore, you need a big fat gaming rig with a 1000 EUR/USD graphics card for the current low resolution. And then there is the issue of the data transmission. Those huge wires (its not wireless yet, and wireless suffers from more lag). Finally, it is pricey.
AR from Google Glass flopped due to privacy concerns. It would aid users in their day to day life like a smartphone or smartwatch does. Its being used for this purpose in business settings (also due to its price) just like some other expensive tools by Microsoft such as Hololens and Surface Hub (84"). The user interface isn't quite there. For example I'd say eye tracking is useful. Some cars also get HUD in windscreen.
(YMMV but as a glass user who uses glasses which also work like sunglasses in the direct sunlight, I'd love to have a pimped glasses with AR.)
Anyway, in short, my conclusion, is:
VR is mostly fun, though some useful sims (e.g. flight trainers, but also things like 3D meetings would make Hyperloop and air travel redundant which saves time & environment) do use it as well. It is more of a niche than AR. AR is going to be part of our every day life in useful/productive ways. AR will be vastly more rampant, and it will be in use in a massive scale earlier than VR will be.
As a side thought imagine going on vacation in VR and it being just like the real thing cause you're on a robot. Your 5 senses get stimulated while you walk through Cairo. You smell the spice whilst you walk through the market on your robot which you control. Why actually still go on vacation then? I already have enough pleasure with Google Photos or the new Windows 10 login screen as it is. Going to see the Eifel Tower which you already saw hundreds of time on pictures is boring as is receiving that piece of metal on a postcard. Oh well.
Oh I read your post, its against HN guidelines to assume and express someone else has not read your post or the content.
If you read the post of your GP (and that GP as well) you'll see they're casually mixing up AR and VR. You do the same, and I called you all out on the difference between the two. There's no need to feel offended about that.
You say you haven't had an opportunity to try AR, and mention Google Glass. The thing is, Google Glass is just one example of AR (a very known one) and also a very multi-functional one. The usability I had in mind is more subtle, more specific.
Examples: Layar has been out for ages (it adds AR on your smartphone screen from camera input e.g. adding complimentary digital info to a paper magazine or food you bought), if you have multiple smartphone cameras you use it, LIDAR uses it, Google Maps ecosystem as well (Street View for example). AI in general can use it. There's all kind of usages of AR such as this traffic light [1]. Not even mentioning about the experiment on how biking lanes are being lit up due to solar energy in the evening/night. Google Glass could've potentially done that all, but there's no reason that cannot exist in the future. It was just the wrong company to come first with the product. Google was also too early with it, just like Apple Newton was too early and GM was too early with the EV.
My first time using VR was on vacation in Spain as a child, using those red/green glasses we were watching a dinosaur movie. It was rather primitive, but immersive. I'm not anti; I just see it rather limited. I've read enough reviews about VR glasses and read reviews of VR games -including realistic screenshots- to know that the quality isn't there yet.
Long-term, VR will make more impact, but that's because it is so different whereas AR is rather complimentary. On the short term, AR is going to be more widespread and useful. I mean, I'd love a HUD on my windscreen telling me I am speeding. Like, of course.
[1] https://dutchreview.com/news/dutch/smart-crossing-dutch-inve...
>Its against HN guidelines to assume and express someone else has not read your post or the content
Hmmm. Uh-huh well, if you're talking about limited AR such as in HUDs or Pokemon Go or glass, that's already here and it's cool and useful, but not very exciting (at least to me). No doubt AR will be a thing in everyday life. I don't see why people (myself included) talk about both technologies (AR & VR) as if its a zero-sum game and we'll only have one but not the other. No reason they both can't exist in the brave new future.
I'd say, that when AR is "boring" that actually means it succeeds. It blends in without being annoying.
If you remember the time when desktops and mobile phones and smartphones become boring; that is when they started to gain traction among the common man; arguably, when they started to become good.
Take the traffic light example I mentioned earlier. If that's rolled out and seen as "boring", I'm happy with it. Because that means it works. Right now, it isn't yet boring, btw. It is seen as an innovation.
Same with innovations like electric vehicle and autonomous cars. Once they're "boring", their functionality is accepted. And we are talking about the "West"; it hasn't been adopted in poorer countries at all, not yet.
VR def. has the wow factor, I agree on that. Look at all the VR movies the past 30 years. AR is much less apparent, though its there as well.
Ultimately, for me games are just spielerei they might be fun (not so much for me anymore as I grow older); they have little to nothing to do with productivity. AR is going to be more useful for productivity than VR. I just don't see a lot of use for VR, especially not on the short term. You can notice this how the VR glasses are largely marketed for gaming, while AR has professional applications which -ultimately- aim to make our lives easier.
My apologies, my tone was probably a little aggressive.
Gaming is the original VR killer app intended to gin up interest and spur development but current VR offerings go beyond that. One of the more interesting applications so far is 'live events' where your digital avatar can attend live sporting events, concerts etc with other digital avatars (you have to experience this to understand what a potential game changer this is). Even watching regular (i.e 2D) movies in an immersive environment on my headset is more fun than watching it on my tv, with the drawback that as of now you can't share the experience with other people not wearing a headset. I'm just scratching the surface of content that is already available NOW (there's even porn if that's your thing, though I personally don't find this very compelling mostly because of the low resolution). Ultimately, if things go the way I think they might, your VR headset would potentially replace not just your gaming console but also your TV set and your laptop/home office (currently I can play chess in a virtual room with only primitive controllers so I don't think working while completely immersed in a virtual environment is a long way off). If you do have the chance I encourage you to take some time to catch up with the current state of the art.
I agree with you that 'boring' is good but in the world we live in unfortunately new tech has to be 'sexy' and 'exciting' to attract venture money and developer interest it needs to get to the boring stage.
The requirement of a high-end GPU, and the current price of high-end GPUs thanks to the cryptocurrency mania, meddle with the adoption.
We're far from VR being mainstream; AR costs far less resources.
From my experience, VR is a huge gamechanger (a new paradigm that will enable a lot of new innovation) whereas AR is also cool but doesn't have that new paradigm potential (like e.g. the internet, smartphones etc. did).
We should also keep in mind that chatbots are clearly a thing that people want; we're just using capitalism to test whether society, technology, etc. are "there" yet, so it's not entirely irrational for investment to flow into this area. (We might debate the scale of the investments, or we can just let the market determine that for us.)
On the other hand, if someone would have pitched Facebook to me, I would have also dismissed it. I keep that mind to stay humble.
For any trend/hype there will always be people dismissing and praising it. Thus, if it is successful or not, there will be people who say "I told you so" afterwards.
It does not matter what a comment on HN says. You personally have to decide, if you want to speculate/invest in some hype or not. You have to decide which new technology you learn and which ones you ignore. In hindsight, it would have been great to learn machine learning five years ago.