
Strong and Weak Technologies - doener
http://cdixon.org/2019/01/08/strong-and-weak-technologies/
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red_admiral
While the idea is sound, a lot of the examples are questionable to the point
where I wonder if this is just another "blockchain is the future" shill
article. Private clouds are extremely big business for FAANG and some
governments, for example (I believe there's a particularly big one in Utah).
iTunes is doing fine last time I checked. Pokemon Go is AR not VR and so on.

The problem is that for every iPhone, there are 99 other technologies that are
not adapted to the world, and fail as a consequence (3D TV where you have to
wear polarising glasses at home or sit at exactly the right angle to the
screen, anyone?). It's not a hard problem to look back at what has already
happened and explain it with your pet theory, as long as your theory is
sufficiently flexible. Using a theory to predict what's not happened yet, and
getting it right - now that's where the real money is. The model as presented
here doesn't seem very strong at identifying what upcoming technologies will
be the strong ones, but really good at explaining things retroactively. As an
investor at least, that's of limited use.

On blockchains specifically, I can imagine a world where in 10 years' time
bitcoin has completely collapsed. In fact, Satoshi has the possibility to
create such a world if they still have the private key to their initial coins.
I can also imagine a world where private/regulated chains are widely used and
permissionless ones less so, or one where permissionless chains have taken off
in a way they haven't yet. It's really too early to tell, although the
Ethereum/DAO experiment makes me pessimistic.

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padobson
I completely agree with this. After reading some of the examples in the list
(E-Sports vs. Traditional Sports, Hybrid Cars vs Electric Cars), it was clear
the concept was not fully baked. This one needs to go back in the oven for a
bit.

In the case of hybrids vs. electrics, it's fine if you want to say hybrids are
like the Blackberry - an initiating technology that prepares the market for a
sweeping, fundamental change. But that's certainly different from Augmented
Reality and Virtual Reality, two technologies that aim to accomplish different
things, or streaming music vs MP3 downloads, which offer two different value
propositions in the lease vs. own models.

The idea needs to be more specific, like initiating technology vs. mature
technology or evolutionary technology vs. revolutionary technology. One could
say the Blackberry or the Palm Pilot was actually the revolution, where the
iPhone was the right evolution of that technology to fully capture the market.
But now I'm just trying to backfit a backfitted concept.

~~~
red_admiral
I've been thinking about this a bit today.

Spolsky's old "Amazon vs Ben and Jerrys" is in my opinion a more mature
categorisation of what strong/weak is getting at here:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-
letter-i-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-ben-
and-jerrys-vs-amazon/)

I think Paul Graham had an article too on how venture capitalists are not
looking for "does this have growth potential" (there are already more
traditional capitalists for that called "banks") but "could this have a 1%
chance at being the next facebook, even if it has a 99% chance of failing?" In
this particular sense, I guess the more radical something looks, the better.

I also remember a HN article a while ago about "how Trello could have been a
success" where success means "going unicorn", to which commenters rightly
pointed out that Trello IS a success at what it set out to do. Trello would
come under "weak" / "ben and jerrys" in this categorisation I suppose,
although it's one of the cloud services I use every day and a lot more than
most others.

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gomijacogeo
If you rolled back the clock a decade or so, every 'weak' technology listed
could have been presented as a 'strong' technology with another, earlier
technology as the 'weak' one. E.g. Private intranets <\- dedicated hardlines,
Interactive TV <\- broadcast TV, MP3 downloads <\- physical objects (records,
tapes, etc), Hybrid cars <\- gasoline cars, ...

I'd reframe it as: Technologists come in two flavors, the ones who think their
current era is fundamentally distinct from earlier eras, and the ones who
don't.

~~~
Walkman
Very good point!

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suprfnk
I don't agree that "Augmented reality" is the weak form for "Virtual reality".
They are two different concepts.

Augmented reality is all about augmenting the real, physical world you live
in.

Virtual reality is about stepping into another world that (usually) has
nothing to do with your real, physical surroundings.

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purplethinking
Maybe the real world is the weak reality? You can do anything in virtual
reality, while the real world has tons of limitations. Thinking (very) long
term, I don't see a reason for why we should prefer the physical reality made
of atoms arranged in an arbitrary way and with laws we can't control or
change, rather than the reality made of bits of information with limitless
possibilities.

It's sort of the difference between theatre and motion pictures. Theatre plays
are great, but they are limited by what can be physically done on stage with
real world objects and flesh and blood actors. Motion pictures with CGI has no
such limitations.

~~~
comex
In the far future, maybe. But as long as we remain trapped in physical bodies
that fundamentally need to spend a lot of time out and about in the real
world, augmented reality will fill a niche that virtual reality cannot. It’s
just that the technology isn’t ready yet. Once you can buy glasses that do
things like, say, labeling people with their names, or giving walking
directions by visually highlighting the path you need to take… then AR will
really take off. (VR also has a long way to go before it reaches its
potential; it’s just that for various reasons its current state is more
“demoable”.)

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mrob
>Strong technologies capture the imaginations of technology enthusiasts.

By this definition, I disagree that music streaming is a strong technology.
Streaming succeeded because it appealed to non-enthusiasts, who are a bigger
market. Technology enthusiasts were early adopters of MP3 downloads, and I
think they are still generally in favor of owning their own music.

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techpop10
This is such an awful post. This is the equivalent of looking back at the last
50+ Super Bowls and proudly claiming the winner of each one. Very "Captain
Obvious".

Surprised he didn't have "automobiles" in the strong category and "horses" in
the "weak" category.

A few of these (cloud and blockchain) touch on current technologies but this
is a really twisted (and cheap) way to demonstrate his key point that truly
innovative technology means thinking outside of current norms. No kidding!

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tacostakohashi
This is more or less the idea from Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
(Nassim Nicholas Taleb), but in the form of a terse article with questionable
examples.

The "strong" technologies are those that benefit from technology improvements
and competition / contributions from many parties ("volatility"), and the
"weak" technologies are those that are dependent on a single company or
ecosystem, and don't benefit from improvements in bandwidth.

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evrydayhustling
Wonder what the reasoning is on putting virtual and augmented reality on
strong and weak sides respectively. I guess virtual reality inspired more new
hardware in the 2016 boom, but maybe just because it was easier? VR feels more
to me like 3D TV - something the industry would love to create a new
generation of products, but doesn't actually improve experiences enough to
motivate consumers and culture creators.

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philprx
One could propose that weak technologies as described by Cdixon are just un-
finished version of one technology.

It's super hard to close the loop on a technology.

It was often said that the companies who benefit the most from one type of
technology are not the first to innovate but the last to innovate, e.g.
Facebook not For etc.

It's because what creates the finest working loop is hard to design into
existence and tweak into motion.

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sidcool
That's a good article and I agree with its essence, but some examples don't
seem correct to me. Sometimes Weak Technologies are a necessary intermediate
step to strong ones. Autopilot is a major stepping stone to full autonomy and
Hybrid cars would pave the way (economically) for fully electric/hydrogen
cars.

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shmerl
_> Streaming music (Spotify) MP3 downloads (e.g. iTunes)_

Streaming (only) implies DRM. DRM-free downloads (Bandcamp) are always better.
So it's a bad example, where some technology made things worse.

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thanatropism
Worse is better is worse is better is worse is...

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Kinrany
Tl;dr: the author proposes a scale where the strength of technology measures
how much the world had to do to start using that technology.

Another interpretation is that "weak" technology is designed to be immediately
usable and useful, while "strong" technology expects the world to adapt and
succeeds in this expectation.

Perhaps using the word "compatible" or a synonym would be more appropriate.

