
David Gelernter predicted Dropbox in 1996 - saurabh
http://blog.garrytan.com/david-gelernter-predicted-dropbox-in-1996
======
mdasen
The issue we face isn't about predicting in broad-strokes technology that
would be useful. It's all the minute decisions that turn the broad-strokes
into something great.

When something becomes popular, people often look for people who "predicted"
it. I remember the article about how Microsoft's Nathan Myhrvold "invented"
the iPhone in 1991. Except that he didn't. Microsoft made a hand-held
computing OS before the iPhone and Palm Pilots existed a decade before the
iPhone. In broad-strokes, they're the same thing. However, they weren't
popular (and not for lack of trying). The issue wasn't the broad-strokes, but
the minute details that made the iPhone (and other devices since) a joy to
use. His work probably led to Windows CE, PocketPC, and Windows Mobile. He
didn't invent the iPhone.

Similarly, before Dropbox we had options like XDrive from AOL, WebDAV servers,
FTP, iDrive from Apple, and many others. We were awash with crappy software to
store our documents on a server and access them from any computer we were on.
Even Microsoft offered a slew of sub-par options that would get re-done as a
Dropbox competitor as everyone started recognizing that Dropbox's model was
wonderful.

Giving David Gelernter credit for predicting Dropbox is to show a lack of
appreciation for the decisions that made Dropbox great - and better than the
army of options that came before it that simply weren't good. Dropbox did what
many before it couldn't do: create an online storage system that people love.
I remember trying a bunch of services like XDrive back in the day. Transfers
would fail, the transfers were synchronous (so you'd get a pause until the
write had happened), things weren't cached locally so load times were poor,
the mount was finicky, etc. They all satisfied the "making documents available
everywhere" criteria similar to Dropbox, but they simply weren't good. Dropbox
worked hard to make it good. They made lots of little design/technical
decisions that make it Just Work. Many before them had tried and failed.

~~~
DigitalTurk
> Similarly, before Dropbox we had options like XDrive from AOL, WebDAV
> servers, FTP, iDrive from Apple, and many others. We were awash with crappy
> software to store our documents on a server and access them from any
> computer we were on.

Amen! Don't be too hard on third-party vendors, though. Dropbox could only
have been created after file-monitoring APIs became commonplace in OS kernels.
If I've got my history straight these APIs were introduced because first Apple
(Sherlock, Spotlight), then the GNOME guys (starting with Eazel's Medusa), and
later Microsoft (after WinFS failed) wanted to do nearly-near-time full-text
indexing. I remember that in Linux land these APIs were quite contentious and
it took several iterations before they got them right.

I'm not sure if the ideas underlying Dropbox were _that_ unique at the time,
but their execution sure was exceptionally good.

Still, some companies _were_ in a position to invent Dropbox before Dropbox
did. The obvious ones being Apple and Eazel, since they had products that were
monitoring the entire user file system _and_ they were selling WebDav storage!

~~~
silverlake
Many already did. Ray Ozzie started Groove Networks in 1997 to do file sharing
and collaboration, later bought by MS. MS also bought a file sharing company
in 2005 to power Live Mesh. That MS failed to nail this market on their own
platform is kinda' pathetic. There were a billion other companies before
Dropbox. I've never understood the enthusiasm for Dropbox. It's all been done
before.

~~~
evoxed
I felt the same until I started using it. As boring as it sounds, _just
working_ and being easy enough for your grandparents to use is apparently
enough to get people excited. The fact that it's been done (or tried) so many
times before really just makes you appreciate it more.

Yeah, MS, Apple, etc. all should've had this figured out years ago and yet
_they didn't_. So boo on them, but it's probably for the better because now we
have Dropbox and you can use it on your Mac or in Windows, on your iPhone,
Android, or whatever...

------
untog
A former boss of mine has a theory that I endorse wholeheartedly- if you want
to make a hugely successful business, start with one that is totally
unaffordable in the current climate, and wait for change.

That's how YouTube started- when it launched everyone was blown away by the
sheer amount of bandwidth they were eating though every day. Lo and behold,
bandwidth costs dropped. The same goes for Dropbox- 2GB for _every user, for
free?_ Are you insane? But storage costs dropped and it's an affordable model.
So it's one thing to predict Dropbox, it's entirely another to actually
execute on it.

I do wonder what the next company will be to follow this pattern. I'd like to
believe that it's Spotify, but their limitations aren't technical, they're the
entire industry. So there's no guarantee that they'll fit the model.

~~~
confluence
It's called chasing the cost waterfall from monopoly to commodity and making
sure you own it with economies of scale (from the book _How We Got Here: A
Silicon Valley and Wall Street Primer (A History of Technology and Markets)_
by Andy Kessler).

Larry Page has also talked about the same phenomena
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1FyhLQOsNac#t=1362s)).
Recommend watching the entire talk.

Follow falling costs - they drive adoption.

------
jmount
That wasn't a prediction. He, like anybody other academic connected to the
Internet of that era had been enjoying drop box like services for years. Both
at work, and if you added the correct digital service in the home. I _lot_ was
done with FTP at the time and there were a lot of specialized clients that did
some really neat stuff. So the statement was more like: other people are
really going to enjoy some of the luxuries I already have.

~~~
rscale
You're right. In 1996 my home directory was stored on an Andrew File System
folder that allowed me to securely authenticate from untrusted networks using
Kerberos, and then access my files remotely, from multiple machines, and it
used local cache used to keep things speedy.

It was incredibly strange that these sorts of capabilities weren't
meaningfully commercialized, even though they were ridiculously useful.

------
Ingon
I would also ask "so"? Everybody can imagine lots of stuff. Its far more
important who will make them real and economically viable. I was dreaming
(e.g. predicting) YouTube in 1998, but that does not mean that I consider that
I've done something big or I've been the first.

------
INTPenis
So? [1]

    
    
      [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebDAV#History

~~~
nikcub
and [1]

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer>

------
stiff
Douglas Engelbart predicted the whole modern computing world, including cloud
services, in 1970s. It still took hard work of thousands of people to realize
it in a way useful to a wide population.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos>

------
benologist
Someone's going to make a service that will make us forget about Dropbox
overnight.

You can quote me on that whenever it eventually happens.

------
newobj
Not sure how impressive this was. My recollection of 1996 was very much a lot
of talk about Java terminals, e.g. machines dedicated only to running some
dumb/thin client with backend servers doing all the work/persistence. That was
a "future" that was only supposed to be a couple years out.

------
rshigeta
Ok, what do you say about this prediction?
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-
Lite:_How_Imperial_Acad...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America-
Lite:_How_Imperial_Academia_Dismantled_Our_Culture_\(and_Ushered_in_the_Obamacrats\))

~~~
mark_l_watson
Thanks for the reference. I enjoyed reading some of the reviews on Amazon that
summarized the book.

Edit: I just bought the book.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I just finished tips book, pretty bad. In my opinion he sounds like a sexist
and his attacks on Obama are really over the top.

------
ronilan
The most important way people are making money on the Net is on the model of
the yellow pages or direct mail companies, by providing a service that you get
for free and making others compete for placement.

~~~
tantalor
"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product
being sold."

\- [http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-
discontent#325604...](http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-
discontent#3256046)

~~~
joering2
So in this case scenario, how is dropbox making money off me? Note I have one
1.9GB true crypted file that i host on drop box for years. please tell me, how
am I being a product that is being sold?

~~~
tantalor
I think ronilan point was that DropBox's type of business (where customers
pay) will always be second tier to Facebook's type of business (where
customers get it for free).

~~~
prezjordan
"We scanned your documents and found you're a 25 year old man who really,
REALLY likes self-help books about depression"

------
psadri
The company he is describing is not dropbox, it is Evernote. At least today.
Dropbox does seem to be going towards adding value on top of the stored
documents instead of just being a cloud FS. So, Evernote and Dropbox are on a
collision course.

------
swombat
When did Microsoft start trying to build Dropbox? Iirc they made at least half
a dozen attempts (that failed) before Dropbox came along. Presumably one of
those attempts started around 1996...

------
professor-z
Come on, people have been predicting utility computing for decades. See
Multics, for example.

------
mbesto
I predicted that too. So what?

------
mark_l_watson
David Gelernter is awesome. Linda distributed memory, Lifestreams, etc., etc.

I had a crazy idea about ten years ago to implement a simple, pedantic version
of Lifestreams for a book project and someone at his company more or less said
that would be OK.

Anyway, they guy is full of wonderful ideas.

~~~
mark_l_watson
It just occurred to me that Evernote has become, for me, a form of
Lifestreams. I use the app on my droid to capture lots of pictures, scan
important paperwork and documents, record interesting and potentially useful
content on the web, etc. My only issue with Evernote is a small concern that
all of my personal computing devices use SSD drives, and Evernote'ing a lot of
stuff makes me hope for more and more storage capacity.

