[ExI] it's better than it used to be

[spike]

... On Behalf Of Stefano Vaj
Subject: Re: [ExI] it's better than it used to be

On 30 April 2011 06:28, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>> What could be envisioned is so fundamentally different from having it.  
In Marconi's era...That would be so expensive and messy, no one would bother
with 
>> it.  No one did back in the old days.

>...Mmhhh, I think that you could have explained Internet exactly as it is,
since all theoretical fundamentals for its later establishment had already
been put in place.

>...I am not absurdly arguing for the irrelevance of the Internet, and not
even of eBay, Wikipedia, Second Life, etc...

Ja.

>...What I am trying to say is that as great as the social impact of it may
have been, how could you compare it with the breakthroughs I mentioned
before, and which to some extent made such things almost inevitable, as they
were *not* before?

Granted they were envisioned.  Check K. Eric Drexler's comments on what
later became the web.  That was in 1986, but he had crystal clear vision
extending about ten years into the future.  In Engines of Creation, the
K.Eric had a good description of a web vision.

>... What are we doing now on such game-changing scale? ...-- Stefano Vaj


Our paradigms are gradually changing.  I have fully accepted the fact that
many of our old business models will fail.  I do not expect the classic
model of a guy sitting in a cubicle at a 9 to 5 for 40 years, then get a
gold watch and die will be a common life map.

Regarding game changing technologies, some of them are subtle and steady.
The best example I can give is how solid state memory has revolutionized
telephony, PDAs, photography, mass storage, etc.  That is a game changer,
but it is something that developed over years, rather than the web, which
just showed up unannounced much to our delight.

spike