Friday, June 22, 2012

Tech Then vs Tech Now

In the dot-com era tech was popular for tech's sake. It was this exciting new thing, the Internet, and you could make millions just by adding dot-com to your name. It was revolutionary, the most exciting new thing since railroads, it was the tracks and the trains, the distribution and the cargo. The rush was on, everyone knew what they were chasing, but no one really understood what it was.

Today, there is a giddiness inside the tech sector, but not in the rest of the economy. People already know what the Web is; the difference b/w PC and mobile and tablet is fairly incremental. There have been some important innovations, like MPG replacing WIMP as the dominant UI model, NoSQL databases, REST APIs, and App Stores, but again these are all evolutionary compared with the Web. Today's tech world is Web native, and so we take it for granted. Everyone understands what it is, but no one knows what we're chasing.

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