Like we get incremental changes, but what’s been groundbreaking?
20 years ago most people had cellphones, laptops, and social media. Now peoples phones are basically laptops, and kids use apps more than programs/websites.
But it’s nothing as “brand new” as cellphones or the internet. Even the chatbots that pretend to be real AI isn’t that different from googles free 411 service or AIM bots.
I’m curious if you can give any example that isn’t hype
While SSDs have been around for a while, they have only been commercially viable (for both home and enterprise use) for maybe 10-15 years.
Today, even a 300 dollar desktop 3d printer (especially a resin printer) will beat even the best industrial printers from just a decade ago.
For less than 50 bucks per month I can get an internet connection at home that’s 16000 times faster than what I had in 2004. Back then, I had to wait minutes to load a single photo, today I can stream three dozen 4k videos at once and still have bandwidth to spare.
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated vaccine research a lot. We finally got mRNA vaccines to work and are now applying them to other diseases as well.
Ten years ago, the idea of fully reusing rockets was laughed at. The first time a first stage was reused was in 2017. Today, most new rocket designs are planned as fully or at least mostly reusable.+
First mass market VR headsets came out in 2012. We are are just now at a point where untethered headsets are reaching usable resolution and framerate. New headsets add features like eye tracking, finger tracking, external cameras for augmented reality…
And those are big changes, but consider some of the changes from 1994-2014:
Laptops went from a premium item for classy business people to a common household item
most households didn’t even have an internet connection in 1994, in 2014 most households had broadband
wifi
the birth of online commerce
the birth of social media
literally Google
we went from CD Players to iPods to having all the functionality of an iPod in everyone’s phone, to streaming any music we want from cloud-based services
we saw the birth and (relative) death of internet radio
while we’re on that topic, podcasts came into existence
we went from independent video stores to Blockbuster to Netflix DVD to Netflix streaming and Hulu as a competitor
furthermore, video streaming over the internet did not exist in 1994. Hell, we hadn’t even started pirating music online at scale yet. You still had to record the radio with a cassette deck in '94.
video games went from SNES and Genesis to PS4, XBOne, and WiiU. We’re talking Super Metroid vs Dark Souls II, or for handhelds, compare the Gameboy/Game Gear to the PS Vita/3DS. If you look at 2004 vs 2024 you’d be looking at KOTOR vs Dragon’s Dogma 2. It’s a much smaller contrast. Likewise if you look at 1984 vs 2004 it’d be from King’s Quest I to Halo 2. And just for fun, 1974 to 1994 would be dnd to Final Fantasy VI
hybrid cars were invented
hydrogen fuel cell powered busses came into existence
video calls went from highly expensive, borderline sci-fi (see, e.g. Back To The Future Part II and the Pokemon anime) to being built into peoples’ smartphones, tablets and laptops
Since 2004, we got smartphones which replaced a huge chunk of technology, internet has become far faster and more accessible leading to streaming services like Netflix and freelance video platforms like YouTube exploding, far fewer people having cable TV, kids growing up with online video rather than TV, social media went from simple platforms meant for communication with friends and family to behemoths meant to capture as much of your attention as possible, misinformation has become more trustworthy to many than traditional news, public school classrooms gained access to technology like Duolingo as learning aids, physical media has been phased out in basically all homes except those with video game consoles, software purchases have been replaced with subscriptions, and now we have programs that can create realistic-looking images and videos, human-like passages, and real-sounding speech.
Saying that none of that is as groundbreaking as the Internet is kinda like saying the Internet wasn’t as groundbreaking as electricity. Just because the effects are subtle doesn’t make it any less groundbreaking.
Much of the changes you describe are big improvements/changes that happened gradually over time (so, not “very new”). I would describe those as iterative improvements, not groundbreaking besides the notable exception of the AI explosion of the past 3-4 years.
20 years ago most people had cellphones, laptops, and social media.
Not in my social circle. We’re middle class Canadian. People had phones, but they were used almost entirely for interpersonal messaging.
I feel like the pairing of social media and cell phones really came about around 2010 or a bit later. Services that always had new content, provided social scoring/klout, and were available in the palm of your hand were newer.
If we go back thirty years, there were plenty of precursors but nothing with broad penetration in society.
You talk about technology but what’s really changing is how much worse the culture becomes. We have some kind of a monoculture now with total groupthink.
Things aren’t changing faster tho…
Like we get incremental changes, but what’s been groundbreaking?
20 years ago most people had cellphones, laptops, and social media. Now peoples phones are basically laptops, and kids use apps more than programs/websites.
But it’s nothing as “brand new” as cellphones or the internet. Even the chatbots that pretend to be real AI isn’t that different from googles free 411 service or AIM bots.
I’m curious if you can give any example that isn’t hype
The changes in technology from 1984 to 2004 is mind boggling fast when compared to the minimal changes between 2004 to 2024
You’d have to go pretty far back to see things change slower over 20 years than 04-24.
I think OP is just confusing hype for reality, or just isn’t old enough to know what it was like more than a decade ago.
It’s the only way their post makes sense, and if they aren’t going to clarify that’s what we have to assume
You may be looking at the wrong things then:
And so on…
And those are big changes, but consider some of the changes from 1994-2014:
Ten years ago the falcon 9 was running flights to the ISS. 9 years ago was the first successful booster landing.
Since 2004, we got smartphones which replaced a huge chunk of technology, internet has become far faster and more accessible leading to streaming services like Netflix and freelance video platforms like YouTube exploding, far fewer people having cable TV, kids growing up with online video rather than TV, social media went from simple platforms meant for communication with friends and family to behemoths meant to capture as much of your attention as possible, misinformation has become more trustworthy to many than traditional news, public school classrooms gained access to technology like Duolingo as learning aids, physical media has been phased out in basically all homes except those with video game consoles, software purchases have been replaced with subscriptions, and now we have programs that can create realistic-looking images and videos, human-like passages, and real-sounding speech.
Saying that none of that is as groundbreaking as the Internet is kinda like saying the Internet wasn’t as groundbreaking as electricity. Just because the effects are subtle doesn’t make it any less groundbreaking.
I agree with the vast majority of your comment, but this irked me a little:
Here’s the definition of the word groundbreaking, per the Cambridge Dictionary:
If something is groundbreaking, it is very new and a big change from other things of its type
Much of the changes you describe are big improvements/changes that happened gradually over time (so, not “very new”). I would describe those as iterative improvements, not groundbreaking besides the notable exception of the AI explosion of the past 3-4 years.
Not in my social circle. We’re middle class Canadian. People had phones, but they were used almost entirely for interpersonal messaging.
I feel like the pairing of social media and cell phones really came about around 2010 or a bit later. Services that always had new content, provided social scoring/klout, and were available in the palm of your hand were newer.
If we go back thirty years, there were plenty of precursors but nothing with broad penetration in society.
You talk about technology but what’s really changing is how much worse the culture becomes. We have some kind of a monoculture now with total groupthink.
Younger people don’t notice this I guess. :)