Re:Tell HN: Facebook is blocking the publiccode.eu open lett...
by Beldin on Thursday April 28, 2022 @08:02AM
(#31191488)
> Electronic computers have essentially been around for a century.
That's like saying cars have been around for more than a millennium, since the Romans and Egyptians already had horse-drawn carriages.
World War 2 spurred innovation in automated computing. Post-war, the first computers appeared. Still not enough for the famous quote from the 60s "i believe there's a world market for maybe 5 computers". Whether or not that's an urban legend, in the 60s, that quote was not a priori ridiculous. And let's not claim that less than 5 suffices for "being around" (eg, animals considered extinct have later been found in such numbers).
Nevertheless, let's graciously say that computers have been around since 1960. That's 62 years; rather far short of a century.
Electronic computers have essentially been around for a century. The internet is easentially a subset of that market, and bam!, that massive growth.
With that growth has come all of this change. Some of this change is not even about the internet, but instead, about storage, capacity growth, and thus centralized control.
(Not just govenment, but for example, large banks have a central office approve or deny things, where 50 years ago branches made such decisions).
My point is, big change in an existent market, due to new tech.
That market has cooled, with repect to change. Another grows. Biotech.
Fueled by computing changes, and other tech changes, it will soon be as transformative as the internet was. Just genetically engineer humans as a start.
But all the other tech surrounding this, it will make the change the internet wrought seem tiny in comparison.
Just imagine furries everywhere, for example.
shudder