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How ironic that ever since the future has arrived... (kk.org)
2 points by nreece on Dec 28, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



Computing can't be compared to the car industry.

The car is just one industry that is (was?) part of the Industrial Revolution. And the Industrial Revolution isn't even over; it's still going on in places like China.

Computing is more like the whole Industrial Revolution. It's not just a new kind of gadget, it's a whole new set of principles. Business models will come and go but I don't see any end to rapid change for at least the next 50 years.

Even if we hit a limit to Moore's Law tomorrow, the world would take a long time to even come to grips with the technology we already have, but isn't widely distributed yet. Consider that Facebook doesn't rely on any technology that wasn't available in 1997. And yet it took until 2007 for the economies of scale and the changes in society to make Facebook possible.


This is a reblog(?) of a book that Kevin Kelly wrote in 1998. It says that GM is junk and Microsoft is on top of the world, but won't be in 40 years. Glad to know that.




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