I feel like it’s less of a death and more of a dormancy.
A lot of the technical world, in my view, is cyclical. Mainframes, then client/server, now we’re moving back to mainframes (the cloud). There was a time places like identi.ca and diaspora were “hip and cool”, then Twitter et al were popular, now Mastodon and Pleroma are decentralising that again.
We’re right in the middle of the “decentralised stores -> centralised stores -> decentralised stores” cycle. I have a feeling they will come back when the concept becomes novel again. (At least for a few years.)
In the 1970s, most compute power was in mainframes, and users used “terminals” (very close to what is now termed “thin clients” or “dumb clients”) to interact with the mainframe, retrieve and save data, queue jobs, and perform work.
In the 2010s, most computer power is in the cloud, and users use smartphones and tablets to interact with the cloud, retrieve and save data, queue jobs, and perform work.
Important edit: the other similarity is that the code is running in the cloud, not on the client. The web browser and the mobile app using an API is basically the 2010s version of the thin client. All the important processing, code, etc is in The Cloud, the way it was on The Mainframe.
warning: long, winding response due to passion for topic.
Yeah I definitely agree. I was discussing something similar with a friend of mine but in terms of art and gaming. Much like mom and pop shops free indie gaming, while centralized on places like newgrounds and friends, used to much more accessible, unique, and popular.
In addition to Amazon and eBay, I think an important market place especially for small makers is etsy and mercadolibre (in south america).
It’s odd, despite technology propagating, development being made easier and a more common skill, people are opting for marketplace experiences. I guess this is because of the indexing you mention, but culturally, I think it’s come from shorted expectations of request fulfillment (read: instant gratification). We want an answer on the first page, find the movie we’re looking for in the first few rows, etc. etc. You mention this as well in terms of things that producers are optimizing for, and taking that into consideration it seems like a vicious cycle that leads to consolidation of attention. I.e. we want to know a thing and use the internet to know it quickly, people who want to make money of us wanting an answer will make it so that we use their service to answer our question and thus make it faster to attract our interest, we use it because it’s faster but after awhile we expect/need it/desire it to be answered even faster, ad infinitum.
Well, that whole shtick, fundamented by the fact that individuality in all things ain’t cheap, is difficult to maintain, and might not actually achieve anything. At least for a mom and pop shop. In 2019, how is not making a small retail website not similar to not making the hammer to build the chair one sells, or the TVs one sells?
In 2019, how is not making a small retail website not similar to not making the hammer to build the chair one sells, or the TVs one sells?
This is how I feel. And there are other examples. Most people don’t write their own blogging software any more, they use an existing piece of software. Most people don’t write their own software to run tabular calculations of various sorts, they use Excel or similar.
This is literally the entire history of our industry: something is novel and people experiment with how best to do it –> best-practices and reusable modules emerge and a novel implementation becomes tedious or even a liability –> something else becomes novel and the cycle repeats.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, this is how all businesses work. As capital accumulates, it becomes controlled by fewer and fewer people. This article could have been an interesting critique of capitalism as it relates to the internet, but it seems to have missed the mark on that.
I feel like it’s less of a death and more of a dormancy.
A lot of the technical world, in my view, is cyclical. Mainframes, then client/server, now we’re moving back to mainframes (the cloud). There was a time places like identi.ca and diaspora were “hip and cool”, then Twitter et al were popular, now Mastodon and Pleroma are decentralising that again.
We’re right in the middle of the “decentralised stores -> centralised stores -> decentralised stores” cycle. I have a feeling they will come back when the concept becomes novel again. (At least for a few years.)
How is the cloud like mainframes? Don’t understand analogy
In the 1970s, most compute power was in mainframes, and users used “terminals” (very close to what is now termed “thin clients” or “dumb clients”) to interact with the mainframe, retrieve and save data, queue jobs, and perform work.
In the 2010s, most computer power is in the cloud, and users use smartphones and tablets to interact with the cloud, retrieve and save data, queue jobs, and perform work.
Important edit: the other similarity is that the code is running in the cloud, not on the client. The web browser and the mobile app using an API is basically the 2010s version of the thin client. All the important processing, code, etc is in The Cloud, the way it was on The Mainframe.
warning: long, winding response due to passion for topic.
Yeah I definitely agree. I was discussing something similar with a friend of mine but in terms of art and gaming. Much like mom and pop shops free indie gaming, while centralized on places like newgrounds and friends, used to much more accessible, unique, and popular.
In addition to Amazon and eBay, I think an important market place especially for small makers is etsy and mercadolibre (in south america).
It’s odd, despite technology propagating, development being made easier and a more common skill, people are opting for marketplace experiences. I guess this is because of the indexing you mention, but culturally, I think it’s come from shorted expectations of request fulfillment (read: instant gratification). We want an answer on the first page, find the movie we’re looking for in the first few rows, etc. etc. You mention this as well in terms of things that producers are optimizing for, and taking that into consideration it seems like a vicious cycle that leads to consolidation of attention. I.e. we want to know a thing and use the internet to know it quickly, people who want to make money of us wanting an answer will make it so that we use their service to answer our question and thus make it faster to attract our interest, we use it because it’s faster but after awhile we expect/need it/desire it to be answered even faster, ad infinitum.
Well, that whole shtick, fundamented by the fact that individuality in all things ain’t cheap, is difficult to maintain, and might not actually achieve anything. At least for a mom and pop shop. In 2019, how is not making a small retail website not similar to not making the hammer to build the chair one sells, or the TVs one sells?
This is how I feel. And there are other examples. Most people don’t write their own blogging software any more, they use an existing piece of software. Most people don’t write their own software to run tabular calculations of various sorts, they use Excel or similar.
This is literally the entire history of our industry: something is novel and people experiment with how best to do it –> best-practices and reusable modules emerge and a novel implementation becomes tedious or even a liability –> something else becomes novel and the cycle repeats.
Counterpoint: Shopify is bringing them back.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone, this is how all businesses work. As capital accumulates, it becomes controlled by fewer and fewer people. This article could have been an interesting critique of capitalism as it relates to the internet, but it seems to have missed the mark on that.
Capital is worthless unless it moves.