
You Are Not Late - applecore
https://medium.com/message/you-are-not-late-b3d76f963142
======
woodchuck64
Had to find out what eventually happened with Quittner/McDonalds.com:

"Quittner did indeed offer the name back to McDonald's in one of his magazine
columns, but not in exchange for money. In a manner reminiscent of the
Princeton Review, he instead offered to surrender the domain name if
McDonald's corporation would underwrite some Internet equipment for a grade
school. This and other provoking articles caught the corporation's attention;
they responded not by funding grade school computer access, but by pressuring
the InterNIC to revoke Quittner's registration of the name. Although the
registry had stayed out of previous disputes such as the Adam Curry
litigation, sticking tenaciously to its "first-come, first-served" policy, it
wavered before this new corporate threat. InterNIC first resisted McDonalds'
demands, then eventually agreed to revoke the registration, then changed its
mind again, leaving the registration with Quittner. McDonald's ultimately
agreed to donate $3,500 to purchase the equipment."

From
[http://jolt.richmond.edu/v1i1/burk.html](http://jolt.richmond.edu/v1i1/burk.html)

~~~
narag
Would that nasty move be acceptable today for McDonalds? The Internet has
changed some things.

~~~
dkuntz2
Yes? That's basically what large corporations do today...

Nissan (the car company) is still working to get nissan.com, and they're
almost exclusively attempting to do it through legal means instead of
negotiating with the current owner.

~~~
narag
What is acceptable for some companies is not for other companies.

------
rdl
How we access the internet has changed (mobile, smartphones, pervasive
broadband), and businesses effectively provide great services connected to the
Internet (Amazon in particular), but for me, the only real changes other than
those from ~1992 to today are mixed:

1) Lots more people on the Internet

2) Lower barrier to access

Sure, it's prettier, but USENET, IRC, etc. basically covered what we do with
the Internet today. USENET was still technically superior to most discussion
tools today; the web was a big step backward overall until the mid/late 200Xs,
vs. native clients.

~~~
ghshephard
Couldn't disagree with you more. To name just a dozen new internet things from
the last 10 years that I did not have in 1990s.

    
    
      o Google
      o Wikipedia
      o Netflix
      o iTunes
      o Spotify/Pandora
      o Stack Exchange/Overflow
      o RSS (Google Reader/Feedly/etc..)
      o GitHub
      o Facebook
      o Instagram
      o Whatsapp
      o Gmail
      o Google Earth/Maps.
    

I can only imagine what the next dozen new categories will be invented in the
next 15 years.

~~~
rdl
Handling video and audio was an improvement brought mostly by computing
technology vs. the Internet expanding; I'm fine with a LAN-local archive of
music and video (admittedly, using flac/mp3 and bd remux and h264), and a lot
of my content was ripped from physical media vs. downloaded. So the streaming
services aren't terribly compelling to me.

(Pictures, too -- until the late 1990s, graphics were a pain)

USENET > RSS.

CVS for projects like FreeBSD wasn't particularly worse than GitHub.

gmail is actually inferior to mutt + own mail server in a lot of ways; it's
easier to set up.

Google Earth/Maps are awesome, as is google search. Wikipedia is the kind of
thing which easily could have existed in the 1990s-style Internet; FAQs were
largely the same thing, just structured differently. I'd count it, but I do
think a 1990-era Internet would have eventually created some kind of
repository of indexed knowledge like Wikipedia.

~~~
gfodor
re: streaming, the value is the instant access to the content. how did you
fill up your hard drive? rip DVDs? Pirate it? Totally absurd to say streaming
legal content instantly is not compelling vs. the file server/warez approach.

Web based e-mail is obviously superior to setting up your own mail server.
Zero-install, access anywhere. I have memories of configuring sendmail and
ripping my hair out. You really think this was a superior way of dealing with
something as fundamental as _e-mail_? Nowadays it "just works." In the interim
we had ISP hosted mail servers which were always broken, misconfigured, going
down, and eating our e-mail. I remember walking on eggshells helping people
set up their ISP e-mail knowing that I was one checkbox away ("Leave a copy of
e-mail on server") from making it so their entire e-mail history was a hard
drive crash from being destroyed permanently.

And don't get me started on OSS source control. Github has transformed the way
open source works. CVS (and non DVCSes in general) sucked. The online tools
sucked. I still cringe when I get redirected to source forge for a download. A
lot of amazing work got done but I'd never want to go back there.

I'm with you that wikipedia "the software" _could_ have been created in the
1990s, but it would have been a barren wasteland without the larger access the
web has now. In fact, I'd be shocked if there weren't a handful of attempts to
bild an open internet based encyclopedia during that time, and now we have
selection bias making us think wikipedia was the first. So what you see there
is an example of something that, imho, couldn't exist _without_ wider access
to the web. Ie, it's an example of not just better tooling but Internet
applications that became enabled by wider access, which is what you seem to
have been arguing against actually existing.

------
FLUX-YOU
>You could pick almost any category X and add some AI to it, put it on the
cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the
hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first.
And then they would sigh, “Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was
back then!”

It's a bit easy to imagine once something's already survived it. A device with
a hundred sensors probably survived hundreds or thousands of failed released
or unreleased iterations. Every other mature field has probably gone through
this same sentiment (and maybe still going through it, and perhaps will always
go through it). If only astronomers today could imagine what new, novel
techniques are just lying right in front of them with all of this computing
power and automated manufacturing ability. Imagine how much further ahead
astronomers would be in 2044 if they had discovered thingamajig back in 2014
instead of 2040! I think the greybeards of 2044 would be a bit biased.

But this feels like we'd be backpedaling on choosing the right tool for the
right job. Slapping AI onto something and watching it fail is great for our
knowledge, but not our wallets. This is when business leaders create friction
with development. This is where you get "Just make it work" commands which
gets the snowball of technical debt rolling. The value gained is "This
solution sucked in reality! Or maybe we just sucked delivering it! Don't do
what we did unless you have a good reason!", but that's not what we're really
after, is it? We could sit around and brute force a bunch of combinations of
ideas and markets, I guess.

And finally, if it was true back in 1985 with domain names, and it's true
today with AI and the cloud, why wouldn't it be true for 2044 with VR contact
lenses and holodecks? It seems like the future will be like then and now in
this regard. So.. there will always be a wide open frontier _somewhere_? Do we
really say anything substantial by saying "Today's an open frontier for
internet ideas!"

I think there's a lot less low-hanging fruit than this article might have us
believe.

~~~
bittercynic
The amount of low-hanging fruit available is at least partially dependent on
how tall you are.

~~~
linker3000
...and the number of patents/patent trolls waiting in the wings.

------
phreeza
The funny thing about the Wired article they mention [0] is that it first
ridicules McDonalds for being so tech-unsavy, and in the very next sentece
suggests Burger King register a domain name containing an underscore...

[0]
[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mcdonalds_pr.htm...](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mcdonalds_pr.html)

~~~
pllbnk
If there actually existed domain names with underscores, probably many casual
internet users wouldn't know how to type them.

~~~
evmar
I think phreeza's point was that underscores aren't allowed in host names.
(Officially, at least. I feel like I've seen them work and then sometimes seen
them not work.)

~~~
nilliams
Yep they flat out break stuff in IE at least. Cookie saving, for instance,
simply won't work if the domain contains an underscore.

------
snide
I tell this to people all the time. Usually my analogy is that working on the
web now is like working on Television in the 60s. It's still early and while
the medium might be defined, the delivery and the product never is.

------
jonathanyc
Good article. Reminds me of the proverb that says that although the best time
to plant a tree was ten years ago, th second best time is today. If only I
could remember to keep that point-of-view more often...

------
jehna1
There is no such thing as "the low-hanging fruit".

The year is 1982. Rodney Mullen just managed to perform the world's first
"Ollie" skateboarding trick, that can be count as somewhat the start of the
modern day street skateboarding.

What now is the most junior skateboarding trick (with available equipment,
training etc.) was not a low-hanging fruit back then. While looking back, you
can easily learn the trick by imitating; but back then there was no-one to
learn it from. You had to go trial-and-error a sh*tload of times before making
the first trick.

Of course it looks sooo low-hanging fruit now. With current equipment and
support. But you have to realise that the tools and methods came afterwards,
to support the original invention. But looking the time back then, you had
none of the aids. Just you, climbing to that tall tree to grab the apple and
plant the seeds so everyone else could grab the fruits from smaller trees.

------
VLM
"... saturated, bloated, overstuffed with apps, platforms, devices, and more
than enough content ..."

The article has a nice positive message, but it needs to be tempered with
experience that railroads didn't go on being formed and expand forever in the
1890s, nor did car companies around 1910. Starting Tesla might be a good idea,
but don't forget Delorean and Yugo, and 80s home computers, and early 80s
video games.

I'm not claiming the opposite negative view is correct (unlike the article's
claim about that the positive view is correct). The negative view is worth
considering. Also among readers who know about the above argument, some
acknowledgement that the opposition exists might make the article more
persuasive.

~~~
meowface
You make a good point, but I think it's clear that the Internet and HTTP will
be here to stay for a long time. It's just a matter of creating something that
adds real value.

~~~
VLM
Correct. Note: US centric dates: My point being that starting up a railroad in
1850 was a great idea, not so good by 1900.

Or there were about 150 startup automobile mfgrs around 1900, not quite so
many by 1925.

Starting up a telephone company in 1900, good idea, in 1950, not so good idea.

We still have railroads and car mfgrs and telcos in 2014, they're just not
realistic startup fields.

Every other field of recent human activity has gone thru the same stages of
startup success, startup failures/consolidations, oligopoly oscillating with
semi-regulated public utility, sometimes a long term decline in the industry
after that.

Someday its economically inevitable that "Internet and HTTP" will not be the
place to do startups. I don't think its today, but my grand kids are highly
unlikely to be doing internet startups.

------
gregpilling
I remember having McDonalds.com in a shopping cart, ready to buy it. It was
1993 and I wasn't sure if it was worth $35 per year - I expected I would get
sued.

I chickened out, and didn't buy any dot com domain names, and went back to my
business at the time that had nothing to do with tech. I also chickened out
from buying any other domain name until 1999.

So one of my life regrets is that I didn't buy a whole lot of domain names in
1993 when I first looked at them. A few millions in income missed.....

~~~
kordless
You were afraid to do it. The sale of the domain later for a large amount of
money resolved that fear inside you, only leaving the desire to have bought
it. This is regret defined. While it serves a purpose in our lives in teaching
a lesson, it makes very little logical sense to wish for a future scenario
where you are less afraid, or more intent without considering the reasons why
you were to begin with.

To avoid regret, realize and accept you are going to make mistakes. To avoid
regret, face your fears when they are presented to you. The choice to do what
scares you the most is the single most important ability you have in
controlling your fate in this universe.

~~~
meowface
What would stop McDonalds from suing him if he refused to relinquish the
domain name for free? Couldn't they claim it was trademark infringement?

Edit: Changed "copyright" to "trademark".

~~~
UweSchmidt
Back then things weren't as clear-cut and I believe a lot of money changed
hands when corporations realized that they need their website _right now_.

~~~
pasbesoin
You _can_ be too late, with respect to certain windows.

For a while, people made significant money selling highly desired domain
names, including to big companies.

Now, those companies just "take them away" via trademark infringement claims.
The legal structure for doing so has since been constructed and tested by
them.

One of my concerns is that more and more such windows are being closed. It's
not the isolated case, but the overall trend towards a corporate and corporate
state restricted "push" implementation.

I.e. the end of "open".

~~~
meowface
I don't really see how disallowing people from registering a name already in
use by a person or company goes against "openness". If you're using someone
else's name, I think they're justified in trying to forcibly retake control of
it.

------
spoolphiz
The argument made here is flawed. There is still plenty of "low hanging fruit"
today but the cost/barrier of entry is significantly higher than it was in the
early days.

"People in the future will look at their holodecks, and wearable virtual
reality contact lenses, and downloadable avatars, and AI interfaces, and say,
oh, you didn’t really have the internet"

Seems to me like even if developing a holodeck is looked at as an iterative
process comprised of many small innovations it's still a lot more daunting and
less feasible for a _small_ team to do than building an online book store in
the 90s.

With that said the internet is obviously in its infancy and the opportunities
now are indeed boundless.

------
jqm
When the author is wearing gloves with cut off fingers* and poking around in
the rubble of the post apocalyptic civilization looking for an iron bar
suitable for fending off packs of wild dogs, I hope he remembers writing this
article.

Ok... that was a bit dark. But my point is... no one knows exactly what the
future holds. I do expect he is somewhat correct and more advances are in
store. But sometimes given the geopolitical and resource situation I become
less confident of this as a certainty.

*Post apocalypse characters must wear gloves with cut off fingers. See Mad Max and The Matrix for specific style references if you wish to make your own in preparation.

~~~
zo1
I, too, have fear of the future. Specifically in terms of the unstable world
we live in. In some regards we're very lucky in that certain things are much
more difficult for the world to let happen, mostly due to the speed at which
news (and outrage) travels.

But, at the same time, I'm forced to admit that if it comes down to it, we
really are very much powerless. This is specifically why I'm an anarcho-
capitalist, as I believe that the state is the single most dangerous entity we
can conceive of; and we've gone ahead and given it near-absolute control over
our lives with what lately seems to be very little oversight.

As an aside, the article is indeed quite motivating. No time like the present,
I say.

------
Superbloop
I love this article.

But honestly, I think we make an important and incorrect assumption- we try to
revolutionise by evolution.

Why put smartphones on your wrist or your head and call it a revolution? Why
make an app that is a Tinder or a Wikipedia or a Google for something else and
call it a revolution?

The real revolutions are going to be things that havent been thought of yet,
in any manner. In the meanwhile, we have this hyper-accelerated evolution-
lets focus on lowering the barriers for entry...

------
r_singh
> _Because here is the other thing the greybeards in 2044 will tell you: Can
> you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2014? It
> was a wide-open frontier!_

Maybe the rest of the article is making it sound simpler than it is. But I
couldn't agree with the above lines more.

------
grimtrigger
I take issue with the comparison. The barriers to the internet were many times
lower than the current round of innovations (3d printing, virtual reality).
The only thing that comes close is bitcoin and the relative cheapness lasted
only a few years.

~~~
dangoor
The barriers were still high back then, but they were different barriers.
Bandwidth, CPU and storage all cost a lot more than they do now, and the tools
available were less sophisticated. Building an online store or CMS back then
was a much bigger piece of work.

Today, you don't need to focus on those kinds of problems, generally. The
problems are the next level up.

------
hemaljshah
Great motivational read for budding or aspiring entrepreneurs. The one point
I'd add to the article is to start viewing the world as a solver because we
have more tools to fix and build better solutions than we did 30 years ago.

------
DodgyEggplant
You are not too old either

------
badman_ting
Probably correct. But, it doesn't feel that way.

------
nemo1618
thanks, I really needed this. I had similar feelings about computer hardware
for years.

