back to article After 40 years in tech, I see every innovation contains its dark opposite

Next month will mark forty years since I showed up for the first day of my first professional job. I knew BASIC – I'd even learned how to type RPG-II onto a deck of punched cards – but in reality, I knew nothing. In 1982 the field was not yet very professional. Most people working as software engineers were, like myself, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Speech recognition...

    I used to work (as a researcher) on speech recognition in the 90s - I thought it would be a brilliant innovation to bridge the human - machine interface, save time and give people the opportunity to better their life, yadda yadda...

    In reality, if you make something easier for people (from a consumer perspective), they generally become lazier and sit on their backsides more and think less. I dont blame people, its a nature conserve energy thing, but is one thing that puts technology and humans at odds.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Speech recognition...

      I looked on with admiration as speech recognition was coming along. I even played with it a little, on a simplistic level, on 8-bit Z80 based systems. Then the likes of Google came along and moved all the processing into "the cloud" where no one knows who has access to everything you say. That spoiled it for me. I'd much rather have a simpler interface that works locally, and the power of even a mobile phone should allow that to some extent. I think the problem is, as you say, lazy users. No one wants to learn the limited vocabulary of a locally based system and train it to their voice and peculiarities. They just want it to work with any voice, any language, any accent, right out of the box.

      1. Swarthy

        Re: Speech recognition...

        And it still falls over on the "any accent" - as many a Scot has commented in the halls.

        1. Ken Shabby
          Megaphone

          Re: Speech recognition...

          As this demonstrates

          Scottish Elevator - Voice Recognition

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Speech recognition...

            Even other humans have trouble with Scots accents!

            I could only watch that TV series Rab C Nesbit with subtitles!

            1. DJV Silver badge

              Re: Even other humans have trouble with Scots accents!

              Regretfully, I have to agree with that. As a Vermin Media broadband customer here in the UK I've sometimes had to phone their customer abuse support. Mostly, it seems to be routed to somewhere on the Indian subcontinent and, while it's often hard to fully understand what they are saying, it has proved to be less hard than when the call is routed to one of their Scottish offices!

              1. Evil Scot Bronze badge
                Angel

                Re: Even other humans have trouble with Scots accents!

                I have the opposite, I struggle with the audio compression on Intercontinental VOIP calls.

                The east coast accent Disnae fash me.

                1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

                  Re: Even other humans have trouble with Scots accents!

                  Yeah, but the west coast accent, Weegies especially, is a whole other language!!

            2. CtrlAltDel

              Re: Speech recognition...

              Some kind technologist has obviously heard the collective sighs of the Scots; when I lived in Sydney, Australia, my mobile phone company (Optus) had a voice-activated menu system for support, and it could not understand my soft southern English accent at all. It was only when I affected a Scottish accent (no promises as to the quality of the accent) that it would understand me at all.

              To the relief of Scots everywhere, as well as myself, I soon dropped Optus for mobile and never looked back.

          2. d2

            Re: Speech recognition...

            more akin to moron recognition nowadays,eh? youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg&list=RDNMS2VnDveP8

            The Expert (Short Comedy Sketch) by Lauris Beinerts

            Funny business meeting illustrating

            how hard it is for an engineer to fit into the corporate world!

      2. bigtreeman

        Re: Speech recognition...

        Early 80s, John and Stan did a demonstration of speech recognition at work.

        John showed it off and Stan was sitting at his desk surreptitiously switching the leds on.

        "Into the microphone, say red or green" and magically the red or green led would turn on.

        Until Stan was spotted and the gig was up.

        Lots of fun though.

        1. rnturn

          Re: Speech recognition...

          > Early 80s, John and Stan did a demonstration of speech recognition at work...

          A fellow undergraduate EE student used a low-cost speech recognition board to make a voice controlled waveform generator. It wasn't terribly sophisticated device but it was able to switch between sine, triangle, and square waves, adjust amplitude and frequency, etc. by voice command. While it was light years behind what Siri is able to do today he did this using an Altair in '77/'78.

        2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

          Re: Speech recognition...

          Set in 1949, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The First Circle", includes a chapter in which a high-level apparatchik visits the laboratory-prison where the prisoner-scientists fix the test of a their prototype speech-recognition system by pre-agreeing the test-phrase they'll use when they have to do a demonstration.

          It's a great book, although not exactly uplifiting - especially as it's partly autobiographical. There are no pixies or pot-boiling, so Liam might like it.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

    "The splendor of "knowledge at your fingertips" laid the foundations for a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier". "

    Says it all very well .... the coming 'Metaverse' will ensure that all your senses are 'assaulted' simultaneously to ensure that there is no 'escape' !!!

    I pity the next generation or two, who will exist in that world .... forced by peer-pressure to live in the 'Meta(stasis)verse' 24/7 !!!

    1. UCAP Silver badge

      Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

      We really need a sign at the entrance of the Metaverse - "Here Be Dragons"

      1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

        Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

        Or maybe "Abandon all hope..."

      2. Danny 2

        Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

        "a sign at the entrance of the Metaverse - "Here Be Dragons""

        Some folk like dragons, such as the Welsh and Chinese.

        Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate - abandon all hope, ye who enter.

        1. Fr. Ted Crilly Silver badge

          Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

          Relinquere omnia spero, vos qui ingreditur hic

          write it out a hundred times, or i'll cut yer balls off...

          1. Danny 2

            Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

            Ted, are you asking me to polish up on my Dante? Because I've been polishing up little Dan all day.

            [Dutch joke, the Dutch will get it and explain it to the Italians]

            1. Danny 2
              Coat

              Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

              Ouch, I winced when I read that 'joke' this morning, and am grateful for the downvotes.

              I'd withdraw it but that seems dishonest, so I'll come clean like any politician would -

              1) It was a different time. I was very young back then, that's not who I am now.

              2) My account was hacked, a big boy did it and ran away.

              3) Someone spiked my water with whisky.

      3. cuthbertgraak

        Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

        Or, IMHO, "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.")

      4. trindflo Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

        "Here Be Dragon droppings"?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

          Good God, they have a McDonalds already?

    2. chivo243 Silver badge

      Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

      Buy and Large your are correct!

      signed Wall E

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

      As I read this in the article I flashed to "Blade Runner" or "Minority Report" where there is constant, sometimes personalized advertising on the edges of everything. This will be how many see the world in just a few years.

      1. RobDog

        Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

        I visited EMC World in 2011 and we were shown internet-connected vending machines that recognised your phone as you walked by, and shouted out to you offering wares based on earlier purchases from wherever they took place. Not necessarily the same location, they just knew who you were. Creepy.

        1. DJV Silver badge

          Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

          I would have turned my phone completely off the moment I realised exactly what was going on!

          I suspect that, if these sorts of devices are foisted on the general public, then many of them will be smashed wreckage within hours.

          1. jmch Silver badge

            Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

            "if these sorts of devices are foisted on the general public, then many of them will be smashed wreckage within hours."

            Somehow I doubt that. It's been common knowledge for ages the extent of spying which the Internet giants perform on their clients users product.

            Sandy B's "The Net" was out in 1995, almost 30 years ago!!

            Yet the %age of web users who use ad blockers and reject cookies, %age of mobile users who switch off location tracking etc etc is still miniscule. It turns out that for the vast majority of people, convenience is far more important than privacy.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

              Heads of GCHQ and NCSC are saying it will be a good thing for all phones to have client side snooping. "Think of the children"

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

              > Yet the %age of web users who use ad blockers and reject cookies, %age of mobile users who switch off location tracking etc etc is still miniscule. It turns out that for the vast majority of people, convenience is far more important than privacy.

              Until the companies explicitly have to ask users for permission: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

        2. Gadfly88

          Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

          Isn’t this what the Google beacons all over our cities do? Stores collect this from your phone as well. And, it’s not just targeting advertising at you it’s also capable of dynamic pricing which in the US we have no laws against. In other words they could conceivably know how rich you are and change the price. Or thirsty. Or desperate.

    4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
      Unhappy

      "Ignorance amplifier"

      Damm

      I was so pumped when I thought up that term a few days ago.

      I must have seen it somewhere before something reminded me of it.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: "Ignorance amplifier"

        "I must have seen it somewhere before something reminded me of it.

        My Dad and Uncles used the term, as in "Don't be an ignorance amplifier", when talking about gossip. The Uncles brought it back from their stints in the US Navy (at least I assume that's where they got it ...).

        Religion was known as an Ignorance Amplifier back when I first got to Uni (King's College) ... the term was applied to Usenet in the early days (as in "this has the potential to become a massive ignorance amplifier").

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Agree, Agree ..... 1000 times agree !!!

      Nuclear War plus Global Warning - The Metaverse may be inhabited by ghosts.

  3. Neil Barnes Silver badge
    Holmes

    a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

    Got it in one.

    The early vision of a system of all knowledge available at the click of a button has disappeared behind piles of bright flashing lights of toxic opinion and shouting and attention grabbers, anything to get me to watch another advert for a product I neither need, want, nor care about.

    And I don't see a way out. When major websites and network activity is predicated *only* on 'this is a cool way to make lots of dosh' rather than 'Hmm, this is a neat idea, perhaps people might like to know about it; I'll post it up for free on my website', it's the only possible outcome. The best bits of the web are shy and self-effacing and hide under the mountains of social networking and 'one great hack to...'

    At least with a public library you had to get off your arse and walk to it to get a book out.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

      "At least with a public library you had to get off your arse and walk to it to get a book out."

      True, but with my local library you still have to go online first because they've rearranged the fiction section so it's no longer just a massive set of shelves in alphabetical order. It's now sorted by subject (crime, sci-fi, etc.) so the enjoyment of browsing the shelves for Iain Banks and finding an interesting-looking book by a different author has gone for me. I discovered many of my favourite authors this way. It's also difficult to find many of the books I want because it's not obvious which section they are in. Now I just reserve online, walk in, pick up, check out and leave. Shame.

      1. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        I agree with you but why post AC?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          Image the online hate he'd get if someone found out he could read? Books, even?

      2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        Yes, and bookshops have been the same way for years: it's all in genres. Which is fair enough, but when the science fiction section is full of bloody elves and magic, I tend to get peevish.

        To be honest, I tend to find interesting books I would not normally search out on those tables of special offers and buy one get one half price.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          For books that I would not accidentally run across, I have a couple of used booksellers that I frequent. The owners know me, and my tastes, and invariably have several titles from authors that are new to me when I show up. They also call me when they get in first editions of books I collect, and that kind of thing. Don't let "used" fool you ... this isn't just about musty old tomes. They always have used copies (only read once) of the current NYT best-sellers list, and etc., for those of you who like to turn off your minds when reading.

          As for classifying books, I don't care how they do it as long as it's consistent. DDC, UDC, BISAC, LCC, etc, all have their merits and problems, but anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together should have no issues working within their frameworks.

        2. TimMaher Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: bloody elves and magic

          Totally agree @Neil.

          Nothing worse than having to push your way through some rowdy elves to reach up to the top shelf. And all this while keeping the little buggers out of your magic proof cloak, a garment of inconvenience if ever there was one.

        3. MrReynolds2U

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          surely that's fantasy, not science fiction?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            They tend to be lumped together these days.

      3. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        Couldn't disagree more.

        I have zero interest in potboilers about middle-aged professors strangely attracted to youthful students, or marital infidelities, or any of the mainstream lit-fic junk.

        I'm also not interested in pixies, dragons, magic, supernatural horror, or any of that.

        Save me from browsing through metres of pop junk. Give me sections dedicated to the few genres I'm interested in, or I will not waste my time sifting for the tiny bit of wheat among tonnes of chaff.

        1. ChoHag Silver badge
          WTF?

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          Isn't this exactly the attitude you lament in your article?

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            ChoHag, I seriously doubt that "Liam Proven" is a nom de plume of Mark Pesce.

            I could be wrong, never having seen them both in the same room together ...

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            For one thing, this guy did not write the article. The names are different. They're different people.

            However, their points are not contradictory. The freedom and accessibility offered by the internet doesn't mean that I should read everything, and one of the things that makes the internet so valuable is that I can quickly find resources that are relevant to my interests. I do not have to go through every site in existence to find those talking about what I want to read about, and the same policy can hold in a library. The attitude that was lamented would be analogous to arguing that books I don't like shouldn't appear in the library at all, but Liam didn't say that. A feature that makes it easier to find what you want can be useful if there is a lot out there you don't want.

        2. Sam not the Viking Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          If you already know what you want, why browse in a library? If you are so determined not to be distracted by, heaven forbid, another topic, there are plenty of on-line lists to ease your dilemma.

          I know some have a similar dilemma in selecting a drink at a bar, but I doubt this is a common failing in this forum.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            Some have a similar dilemma in selecting a Linux distro, which seems to be common in this forum (at least it would appear that way, judging by all the noise it generates ... ).

        3. Smeagolberg

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          >Couldn't disagree more.

          ...

          >zero interest in potboilers about... or any of the mainstream lit-fic junk.

          ...

          >not interested in pixies, dragons, magic, supernatural horror, or any of that.

          ...

          >Save me from browsing through metres of pop junk. Give me sections dedicated to the few genres I'm interested in, or I will not waste my time sifting for the tiny bit of wheat among tonnes of chaff.

          Let me speculate.

          - You were not born with your stated literary preferences pre-formed.

          - At one time you were open to new literary experiences.

          - A result was that you discovered new ideas and interests and sought them out.

          - At some time you closed your mind to new experiences and / or ideas.

          A possible conclusion: you froze yourself into a literary ice-block, though might have gone further if you'd continued as you started.

          There is a book - Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - that mentions the way that once someone thinks that they understand (something) it is much more difficult for them to advance than for someone who doesn't think that they already know everything.

          1. md56

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            Yes, indeed. I've spent a happy life discovering how much I don't know (and that doesn't include what QE2 thinks about Meghan -- I'll leave that unknown for ever). The more basic research I do, the less I know I know -- and that's how it should be..

      4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        I don't know if Foyles is still there - it's a long time since I exposed myself to London - or if they've sorted themselves out if they are. But they laid out their shelves by publisher. This way Addison Wesley, that way Prentice Hall...

        You might know the book you wanted and even the author but unless you knew the publisher you had to walk round from one set of shelves to another hoping you'd come across it.

        No wonder the bus shelter outside had a poster reading "Foyled again? Try Dillons."

        1. Greybearded old scrote Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          They've replaced the old maze with a spiffy new building just down the road, and become a subsidiary of Waterstones.

          But they had long since switched to grouping by subject.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            My local bookshop was a small chain and had a good range of books. Then they were taken over by Waterstones and the stock became very predictable best sellers and pot boilers.

            At that point I finally succumbed to buying off Amazon. They had user recommended lists - and even Amazon made a reasonable job of pointing me at possibly related titles even if only available pre-owned..

        2. captain veg Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          Asking the staff was no good either. While queueing for the till on one occasion I overheard the person ahead of me asking if they had the Peter Norton guide to the IBM PC. I could see it on the shelf behind the assistant's head. He replied that it wasn't in stock. I pointed over his shoulder and declared "it's there".

          -A.

      5. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        "so the enjoyment of browsing the shelves for Iain Banks and finding an interesting-looking book by a different author"

        I'm in two minds over the sorting of the books on the shelves. Our local library, for as long as I can remember, used the general alphabetical sorting for most books, but also had some specific genre sections such as crime, SF&F etc. The problem with SF&F, despite the SF and the F being different genres, is there is also a lot of cross-over between the two and neither are especially large genres so get lumped together. Same happens with general Crime novels and the more distinct Murder/Mystery sub-genre.

        As for the quote above, "finding an interesting-looking book" is marketing in reality. What attracted you to it? The colours? Authors name? Book title? There's really not much to see on the spine to make a book seem attractive unless there's something obvious related to an existing interest. I suspect if all books were mandated to be green of red "leather" bound and use the same typeface for gold leaf printed authors name and title, you'd rarely spot an "interesting-looking book". :-)

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          The author Mary Gentle famously claimed that she read the first page, the last page, and page ninety-three.

          Which allegedly caused her author acquaintences to try to include text along the lines of 'Mary, buy this book' somewhere on page ninety-three...

        2. Crypto Monad Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          > I suspect if all books were mandated to be green of red "leather" bound and use the same typeface for gold leaf printed authors name and title, you'd rarely spot an "interesting-looking book".

          See the Two Ronnies:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dZznfGPYRY

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            Excellent! I don't remember that sketch. But that was back in the days before streaming or even the ubiquitous video recorder. If you weren't home to watch it, odds are you'd never see it :-)

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            Our local Oxfam decided to re-order their books into separate bookshelves on different walls. The general classification method they used was author gender. One wall for female authors - one for male authors.

            They obviously didn't think about gender-hiding pseudonyms or first names/initials which can be either gender.

            1. 43300 Silver badge

              Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

              Or that it's completely pointless?

              About the only genre where anyone takes much notice of gender is romance (where female authors seem to be expected, so male writers use female pseudonyms).

      6. StewartWhite

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        There's still fun to be had even with placing books in genres, e.g. Huntingdon library had "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" under Travel which made me laugh so much I almost got thrown out.

      7. Tom 7

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        My local library is a couple of garden sheds sized. Not a huge amount in there but I can browse the counties stuff online but I tend to follow friends recommendations for books and order them online. Having said that a visit to the young'un at uni led us to staying in a AirBnB and I found a couple of good authors there to add to the tree.

        Its fun debugging the library software - still waiting for a book I first ordered 7 years ago now but the same person still has it on loan - ie its been nicked or lost but the best they can do is keep extending the request.

        Alas they seem to be unable to extend searched to other library systems. There's a few things out there I'd love to get hold of but the ebay algorithm makes them cost more than the whole of our local library!

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          "Alas they seem to be unable to extend searched to other library systems."

          Look up inter-library loan. It's possible they don't know it exists. Politely educate them ... more flies with honey & all that.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            I ordered an out-of-print novel from my local library - which they said they would have to get from a different county. It turned out be a warehouse facility where that county kept books which were not popular - but were not yet for disposal. This was about 20 years ago - and they said that such a temporary transfer would cost me £4 to borrow it. Don't know how much they charge nowadays.

        2. martinusher Silver badge

          Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

          Our library is interconnected, they participate in inter-library loans. The software exists and has done so for years; I'd guess the reason for the DiY approach is budget, they don't have the annual budget for that software.

          (If the book is important and they don't have it then why not buy it for them?)

          (Incidentally, I get a lot of my books and media used through Amazon -- they're not just a portal for buying new stuff.)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

            The inter library loan system has existed for rather longer than the idea of keeping the catalogues on computers. Terry Pratchett's L-Space no doubt came from his experiences of helping out in the local library when young.

            Back when I used to work in a library I was occasionally dispatched to borrow books from very interesting libraries.

      8. Kobus Botes
        Boffin

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        @AC

        "I discovered many of my favourite authors this way".

        A thousand times this! Many of my favourite authors were either accidentally found (Like AC Clarke and Theodore Sturgeon, where I read a book by each, that a boarding school roommate's father had taken along on a short holiday with them when I was fifteen), or were introduced to me by a friend or colleague (like Le Carré, Douglas Adams and Douglas Hofstadter). But the most interesting books (about fifty per cent of my private library) were found while browsing for books by any of the above authors (and more). Books and authors that I would never have found had I not been browsing.

        The same goes for music: most of my LP's and CD's were found whilst browsing for something by well-known musicians or bands.

        Much pleasure was accidentally found, not whilst searching for it.

        The modern version of browsing ("People who bought this also looked at...") does not work for me. Most of the time the suggestions turn out to be something that I will absolutely not read or listen to (not because I have a closed mind, but because experience has taught me that I do not enjoy or like what most people do), which has made me very wary of suggestions (I do not do popular; if I like something that turns out to be a hit or popular, it is accidental. I go my own way; if I happen to go along with the crowd, it is purely because in that instance our ways happened to coincide briefly).

        It has "cost" me to some extent: I avoided Radiohead for years, purely because it was suggested that people who like Pink Floyd may also like Radiohead (Now I own most of their CD's, after accidentally hearinig OK Computer on the radio). My brain just does not work that way: I like Rick Wakeman's solo stuff, but Yes leaves me cold. I like ELP, but King Crimson likewise passes me by.

        For the same reason I do not like e-books and downloaded music: I love the smell of books and love examing LP covers and looking at the whole thing. The amount of care taken by a band in designing an album already tells me a lot about what can be expected. That is completely lost in downloaded books and music, sadly.

      9. This post has been deleted by its author

      10. d2

        Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

        alas, alack, Serendipity in libraries is no more

    2. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

      Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

      I've not actually had that problem. When I need information I just put "forum" after my search and it generally finds whatever sort of site I want which is usually a gearhead site of some sort.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: a planetary-scale "ignorance amplifier"

      As I travel a lot (again), I read most books on a Kindle or reading app on my iPad (because there are more good sources of books than Amazon), but I still have a collection of books, some of which are now out of print.

      However, what I miss most are magazines.

      Killing wayward flies with iPads gets a tad costly.

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Windows

    Once again, convenience

    Convenience will be the downfall of our civilization.

    Pseudo-AI that tracks everything we look at in order to serve more of the same. Who thought that would be a good idea ?

    The advertisers, of course.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Once again, convenience

      And yet, physical supermarkets seem to have it just about right. Occasional relocations of stock items, maybe one every year or two, prime sellers at eye level, and "special offers" sometimes in unusual places to trigger impulse buys. Some are looking at Bluetooth tracking to try to see what individuals are doing, which products they pick and put back, how long they stand in certain parts of the shop etc, but I bet they are not finding much use for the data on individuals and are only ever using the aggregated data to re-arrange store layouts and product placement. IME, it's a better shopping experience than online shopping because I don't get bombarded with "other people also bought" and other push advertising.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Once again, convenience

        "prime sellers at eye level"

        Sugar disguised as "food" at the eye level of children ...

      2. M.V. Lipvig Silver badge

        Re: Once again, convenience

        Doesn't work on everyone though. When I can't find what I need at my regular store, in its customary location, I assume they no longer carry it and go elsewhere. Shopping is a freakin' chore, not a fun thing to do, and stores that make my time there take longer hoping to make more money off me eventually loses my business altogether.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Once again, convenience

        There was some talk of face recognition at checkouts. IIRC the idea was to categorise the customer.

    2. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Once again, convenience

      It's pretty obvious the Golgafrincham Ark Fleet Ship B crashed HERE.

  5. Slipoch

    I remember the days pre-VRML when you could hack the nintendo power-glove and hook it into a printer-port for VR on the screen. Blew my mind at the time.

    3D BOXES!!!!!! THAT I CAN MOVE!!!!

    Hopefully the metaverse goes the way of 2nd life. (also around 1/3rd of people get motion sick in VR, so there is the same issue as 3d tvs had in that you have just cut your potential audience by 1/3rd)

    1. jake Silver badge

      "Hopefully the metaverse goes the way of 2nd life."

      I doubt we'll have much to worry about. There was a brief fad where RealEstate agents in these parts (Northern California) were playing up 3-D "tours" of their listings. Was quite the little cottage industry, making scans of properties for sale.

      Only lasted a couple months. The buyers weren't even close to being interested in viewing property through goggles. Seems they universally wanted to see what they were buying in person. Good, old-fashioned boots on the ground.

      What a bunch of luddites! (I actually heard an estate agent say that ... the mind boggles.)

      As for the kids ... my Grand-daughter, age 11, wants no part of this kind of thing.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        I could see the point of 3D tours, but more in the gaming fashion on the computer screen rather than at the sales agents office with goggles on and them trying to push the sale. It could be a good way to winnow the wheat from the chaff and only spend time physically looking at the properties you are most interested in. After al, the static photos can and often are, used to hide the things that might put you off. I'd think the sales agents would be all for only showing around those people most likely to buy and not those who turn up, see the tiny back garden and walk away.

        I see this "photo hiding reality" thing all the time when looking for holiday cottage lets. Anything that only shows the outside in a tight shot is hiding the fact it's in somones back garden or the middle of a housing estate, which is NOT what I'm looking for :-)

        1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

          Heh. I was recently offered a house for sale described as in a quiet country location.

          The exterior shots of the house and surroundings seemed to back this up. Except, somehow the photographer had failed somehow to notice that the house was literally fifty metres from the loud end of the new runway at Berlin BER...

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            The definition of "quiet" being little road traffic, not the general audio landscape it's located in of course.

            Never trust an Estate Agent/Realtor :-)

            They'd probably sell better and quicker, with far less of their own time wasted if they were honest and up front in the first place. I wonder how many "person hours" are wasted by estate agents taking people to house they would never even bother to look at if the description and location was clearly given? You might occasionally get a nice surprise and a sale from this practise, but I bet that's far outweighed by the time wasted :-)

          2. RobDog

            Similar happened here in England

            Newspaper report some years ago showed estate agent photos of a house in Dungeness, Kent, lovely and appealing but photographed from angles where you couldn’t see the nuclear power plant a couple of hundred metres away.

            Found it!

            https://metro.co.uk/2009/09/29/for-sale-charming-white-fronted-cottage-by-nuclear-power-station-448867/amp/

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Went to look at a detached bungalow that was in the estate agent leaflet. Looked nice with a high garden fence. What the set of pictures failed to show were the overlooking multistorey flats adjacent to one boundary - which meant no privacy.

        2. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Having 3D data of a perspective house can tell you whether you can fit a piano through the corridor *before* trying.

          Potentially lots of useful stuff that can be done with a 3D model of an environment.

          1. jake Silver badge

            "Potentially lots of useful stuff that can be done with a 3D model of an environment."

            Including widening of that modelled corridor to make the piano fit.

            Seen that ... except it was a very large antique British wardrobe, not a piano. Fortunately it was caught before the sale was finalized. They knocked enough off the sale price to remove a window and the cripple wall under it, and sneak the wardrobe in under the header. Ended up replacing the flush-mounted glass with a lovely large bay window and a door to the garden. The door has a sidelight that is hinged, allowing removal of the wardrobe should they decide to move.

        3. jake Silver badge

          The 3-D images were equally capable of being manipulated. And were, of course. A big one was converting a weed-filled pasture or paddock into a mature vineyard, or adding a non-existent "water feature" and/or mature fruit and nut trees. Upgrading the kitchen and bath(s) digitally was also common. As was adding a deck with outdoor kitchen.

          People don't want to see "what could be", they want to see exactly what they are plonking coin down on.

          1. John D'oh!

            Weed-filled pasture??? ;-)

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            I wouldn't be surprised to hear that someone who sees that, goes for the in person tour planning to buy right away, and finds out the reality gets very annoyed at whoever created those images. Unlike with the real picture that happens not to include the important thing, adding completely fake things is outright lying to the customer which they don't tend to like. I'd imagine that uses that blatant will earn the realtors a lot of wasted time and they'll stick to more subtle methods.

          3. Dave 126 Silver badge

            > People don't want to see "what could be", they want to see exactly what they are plonking coin down on.

            That makes no sense. If I'm plonking money down on a house, I'll be wanting a surveyor to tell me that it will be good for many years to come: I'm very interested in 'what could be'. Subsidence, flood risk, sub par mortar, estimated annual maintenance costs...

            And if I'm not interested, my mortgage lender will be.

            3D scans aren't just useful for showing off a property, they could be used to assess subsidence over time, aid in assessing modifications, be sent to firefighters in event of emergency. The cost of scans would be expected to fall over time (and not linearly), as would the cost of developing applications which use such data.

      2. usbac

        This was not a brief fad. Go look on Zillow. About one out of every five listings has a 3-D virtual tour.

        We are looking at homes all the way across the country. This is actually kind-of useful. It's better than taking a six-hour plane trip in the middle of a pandemic to see a house.

        Between the virtual tours, street view, and Google Earth, we have been able to eliminate many homes without ever setting foot there. If it weren't for the pandemic, we would probably make a few trips to look at a number of houses, but we are not wanting to travel right now.

        1. jake Silver badge

          You are moving across country based on nothing more than the correct house?

          Every time I made that move, I had a reason to go ... and found a house once I got there, based on whatever criteria the reason for moving presented.

          Moving for the sake of moving seems somewhat contra-indicated.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Depends on the reason and urgency. Maybe they have retired or are about to retire and just want to move somewhere "nice". Moving first, then looking for a house sounds much more like it's career/job related, in which case yes, that's probably a good reason to move to a short term rental first and look when you get there.

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            "You are moving across country based on nothing more than the correct house?"

            That's not what they said. They are moving across the country and they are looking for the correct house, no causation. This means they're almost certainly not moving for the sake of moving, as they appear to already have a location they're going. Whatever reason they have for going there doesn't really matter. Maybe they're hoping to see something they like available now so they can buy it more quickly. Once they do, they can have a place to move into right away. If they didn't do that, they'd have to move out to a short-term location and shop around in an even more rushed way. They could see a lot more places in person, but if they can filter out many with pictures, they're saving time and avoiding the chaos of moving twice.

    2. GrahamRJ

      Motion sickness AFAIK was mostly an artefact of the frame rate for mid-90s VR. (I was there, and I remember just how slow it was to respond to your head moving.) I played with my brother-in-law's Oculus recently, and that's basically seamless now.

      More interestingly, he mentioned that there's a real business case for this. I've always said that I'll work in a paperless office just as soon as they give me a screen the size of my desk - until then, cross-referencing multiple datasheets is a non-starter. He says he's got a Minority Report kind of thing though where all the documents hang in the air in VR, and you can pull them towards you for a look or shuffle them around or whatever. Sure it's not as crisp as a good monitor, but I can see definite applications there - after all, an Oculus Quest is cheaper than 2 half-decent monitors, and my company are already giving the mechanical engineers 3-screen setups.

  6. Howard Sway Silver badge

    I doubt whether any of us are prepared for that moment when we don augmented reality 'spectacles'

    Some people will be - the minority of people who bought into Google Glass before the realisation hit them that it wasn't enjoyable or useful in any significantly better way than getting information from a screen (either on a phone, tablet or monitor). Plus the large majority who took the piss out of them and called them "glassholes", because they'd realised this would be the case without having to buy and try the product first.

    The fallacy that all it needs is better graphics and a bigger hype to make the idea catch on has arisen amongst those who ignored this basic lesson in their desperation to be pushing "the new thing", as easily proved by the stubborn non-adoption of the VR world by the general public. I think this is because many people are fully able to imagine what the user experience will be like, and conclude that it's not really going to be worth buying, as it doesn't offer much that they'd really want.

    Bombarding the public with adverts featuring lots of happy smiling attractive young people pretending to be having a great time whilst having VR headsets strapped to their faces will, I suspect, be met with much more derision and piss-taking than those trying to push this idea expect.

    1. Greybearded old scrote Silver badge

      Re: I doubt whether any of us are prepared for that moment ...

      The IT world has very short generations. The people pushing this didn't see the previous attempt, let alone the one before that, so they think they've invented something. And they don't know how it failed before.

      OTOH some things fail because the technology isn't yet up to doing what is wanted. A later project might work out.

      1. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Bricking It.

        The difference now is that when they invent something useful they can wait until it's sold millions and made them tons of profit before making it obsolete and, more importantly, unuseable, by closing the necessary cloud support and and forcing you to buy the their "next big thing" which, essentially, does exactly the same as the thing they've just stopped you using.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: Bricking It.

          Thank god that's not happened before!

          Oh wait...

          Yeah, nailed it.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: I doubt...(title too long)

      "having VR headsets strapped to their faces"

      The latest ones seem to be much, much smaller nowadays, more like wearing a pair of slightly larger sunglasses and from the one I saw demoed on The Gadget Show the other week, quite impressive. But for gaming while at home, probably sitting down. On the other hand, it's rare to see anything on The Gadget Show that they are critical of other than in the comparison tests. They get all excited by IoT stuff and never mention the downsides.

    3. Dave 126 Silver badge

      > The fallacy that all it needs is better graphics and a bigger hype to make the idea catch on has arisen amongst those who ignored this basic lesson in their desperation to be pushing "the new thing

      Maybe. But it's also possible that the tech wasn't up to the task before, it isn't just yet, but it's close. See kguttag.com. The advances in AR optics are striking (as you'd expect given the huge funding various display companies are attracting). Other components (low latency computing in a power efficient package, laser scanners, cameras, software, APIs) are close to ready. Apple's first AR is headsets rumoured to be for developers... makes no business sense for Apple to release a product into a new category if it is rubbish. And they've tried the best prototypes that money lets them build today. Unlike me. Or you.

      I wouldn't use the case study of Google Glass alone to estimate the success of any future AR product. Windows XP Tablets Edition machines were clunky and didn't catch on- that led many in this very forum to predict that the iPad wouldn't catch on. They know who they are.

  7. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Tie me down

    > In 1982 the field was not yet very professional.

    Oh, I don't know.

    Some years before that, yours truly finished the university year and rocked up at my parents house that weekend.

    On the monday I picked up the local (weekly) paper and looked casually through the Positions vacant section. There, in small print was a company just a bus ride away that was looking for FORTRAN programmers. "I could do that" (and even now I still write FORTRAN, but in several different languages) and gave them a call.

    Having explained myself to the person who answered the phone, they said "Come over, we'll have a chat".

    Now job interviews were pretty new to me. So I didn't change out of my ratty old jeans and faded T-shirt - after all, it was only a "chat", wasn't it! I got to their nice, clean offices with potted plants by the window. Indoor shrubbery - what an odd idea. While waiting, I watched someone enter the pass-code to their secure area and made the number and then got called in to see the man

    Can you write FORTRAN he asked, which after my 2 years of 1 lecture a week I replied in the positive. I had done a couple of projects of which only one had locked up the university mainframe, so I though that was fair enough. The man started rattling on about Data General and Eclipses and credit scores and stuff. I nodded when it seemed opportune.

    Eventually he stopped talking, wrote a name and an address on a piece of paper and handed it to me. "You start tomorrow, it pays £55 a week. Here's the name of the team leader (wassat?) and the customer's address. Just one more thing: could you wear a tie?"

    I learned two things from that. The first that a nod's as good as a wink when you haven't a clue what someone is talking about. And second that wearing a tie gets you places. How much more professional can it get?

    1. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: Tie me down

      Important things, ties. They restrict the flow of blood to the brain, and stop it getting too enthusiastic.

      1. Red Ted
        FAIL

        Re: Tie me down

        Hmm, doesn't seem to work for my boss who always wears a tie and is never short of "clever ideas"!

        1. Pete 2 Silver badge

          Re: Tie me down

          > my boss who always wears a tie

          Every heard the phrase "I hope you're wearing your suit when it gets promoted"?

          It sounds like your boss has.

          1. adam 40

            Re: Tie me down

            I always thought as a contractor a suit and tie was worth an extra £5 an hour, so a good investment.

            On my longest contract (7 years) some of the permies thought I was on the board of directors!

      2. Mike 16

        Re: Tie me down

        One job, those of us in Engineering (tee shirts and the occasionally shorts on hot days with the usual insane climate control) sometimes referred to the ties worn by the DP/MIS folks as their "EBCDIC Flags".

        There, I've lost some generations of people who used a few (later) generations of the IBM S/360.

        I got that job partially due to advice from a friend's girlfriend who was "skilled in the art" of the interview.

        She had recommended a "casual" look that included jeans, but also a long-sleeve shirt with pockets

        (signalling practicality), topped with a sport-coat. The idea was to appear "typically into comfort and utility, but threw on the coat at the last minute to signal 'but you are special enough to make the effort to dress up'"

        It worked. Or was it my ability to avoid being sucked into a dispute between my two interviewers (heads of the Hardware and Software departments)?

    2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

      Re: Tie me down

      ".. I still write FORTRAN, but in several different languages."

      I love that.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: Tie me down

        "I love that."

        Feel free to use it ... it's a meme that's been around since before the TCP/IP version of the Internet.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Tie me down

          What really annoyed me was having to sort out somebody's BASIC written in FORTRAN - just after we'd both come off a 5 day FORTRAN course. I say fize - I don't know what they did on the first day because I'd only joined it on the Tuesday & didn't seem to have missed anything.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Tie me down

            I've spent pretty much my entire career sorting out BASIC written in other languages. NEVER teach a kid BASIC as a first language, it screws 'em up for life.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Tie me down

          A good FORTRAN programmer can write FORTRAN in any language

          Has existed since well before Richard Dawkins invented the word meme.

          Doesn't stop it being true though

          Pah who wants any of this new fangled FORTRAN77 stuff anyway

      2. TimMaher Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: FORTRAN

        Didn’t the Devils Dictionary describe FORTRAN as a language written for scientists, so that they could introduce their own bugs without the help of a programmer?

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Tie me down

      Ever get a tie caught in a cooling fan or a line printer? There's a reason that ties were fair game for anyone with a pair of scissors at most early Silly Con Valley companies.

      The only real use for a tie is as a handle when trying to shake sense into the wearer.

    4. J.G.Harston Silver badge

      Re: Tie me down

      Wearing a tie is a trivialising redundant piece of bodily ornamentation which insults my religious beliefs, I'll see you in the employment tribunal BIGOT!

      I'm still holding waiting for the opportunity to (factualy) use this line.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Coat

        Re: Tie me down

        "Wearing a tie...insults my religious beliefs"

        Not a Mormon then?

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: Tie me down

          He's talking neck wear, not family ties.

  8. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Friendster

    I love that linked article about Friendster - they were simpler times in 2003.

  9. Greybearded old scrote Silver badge

    VRML

    I think it's fair to say that VRML was just a wee bit ahead of our available bandwidth and CPU. When they did catch up I really wish that the front end devs had picked it up again, rather than wanting a subset of OpenGL. But then I'm fussy about accepting code from just anyone.

  10. laughthisoff

    Shiva?

    Shiva! Now there's a blast from the past.

    I used to work with one of Shiva's earliest UK distributors (late 80s, early 90s). Originally with their Apple networking kit, then the LANrover PC/Mac dialup boxes. But even before that, however, was (what I assume is referred to as Shiva's "IP Gateway" in the article) the "FastPath", originally from Kinetics, but which arrived at Shiva after a brief (and rubbish) stint with Novell. Cut my first real job and networking teeth on FastPaths... hot little monsters that they were.... and that was on the earlier versions before Apple got their EtherTalk stack properly in gear. My first ever US trip was a training session for FastPaths. That brings back memories. Visited many a UK university and Apple dealership with one of those in tow, way before the likes of Demon started plugging normal businesses and people into the webs in the UK. By the early 90s it was then LANrover dial-up gateways taking up the time...

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great article, thanks

    This is why I am so fascinated by Black Mirror and the imagination of Charlie Brooker. We have to be guarded about where we are heading with technology.

    Love & Peace

  12. ecofeco Silver badge

    Well said

    See title.

  13. Hazmoid

    I think there have been enough warnings about VR

    Given that we have seen "Tron", "The Matrix" and any number of variations that indicate that people living in a VR world miss out on what is happening in the real world.

    Add the problem of motion sickness, and being tied to a computer with sufficient processing power, and we are still not at the point that technology can be said to be progressed.

  14. aregross

    I had to look up...

    ... FOMO. None here, nada. However, my daughter and her generation (she was born 1990) is always wondering that, sad. I go out and look for it... if I can't find it, it probably wasn't worth finding, it's not gonna change your life, move on.

    I did try and instill the concept of Cause and Effect and as much Zen as she would take, that's all you can do!

    Where's that light bulb icon!

    EDIT: LOL I fergot what I posted for,... that was the most intelligent column I've read in like for-eva!

  15. destructo

    Shiva

    I still wear my Shiva gimme cap once in a while. It is longer lived than their other products, I guess. Only thing is, people ask me if it’s Hindu or Jewish…

  16. mbee

    Basic, I learned that ages ago along with Fortran and cobalt. What came of the revolution is hoards of people glued to their phones every waking minute. Personally I think they are wasting their lives but they do seem happy. Every step forward has its ills. In balance the world is a lot better place for the average person than it has ever been in the past.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      As long as there is no unnecessary suffering then the human race is probably chugging along ok. Its existence in the Universe is apparently irrelevant and serves no purpose.

      Everything in a person's life matters to them - no matter how small a detail - but in the end nothing matters.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The story resonates with me, having a comparable timeline in IT and especially internet in the days of archie, irc, gopher, veronica, usenet and then the wild west years the first browsers started.

    What has become apparent to me is that lessons are not learnt. The problems that arose when coding for the mainframe are forgotten when a new language appears, every generation of coders seems doomed to make the same mistakes. We oldsters "know nothing", fresh out of college know everything.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    By 1982 ICL was expecting Computer Science degree job applicants***. In 1966 they had had a policy of any university degree discipline - and university drop-outs often proved innovative minds. We (working on a mainframe prototype) ended up with a History & Politics graduate who could never grasp the A-F numbering notation of hexadecimal - or that zero had the first ordinal position. He was quickly moved to the contracts department.

    ***Tom Thompson said that they took longer to train - because you had to first teach them they didn't already know everything about computing.

  19. martinusher Silver badge

    Er, here's your problem, mate

    >In 1982 the field wasn't very professional

    I started work in 1970 and the problem with programming was that i was *too* professional. I didn't like early computers that much -- systems, even minicomputers, were large, expensive and slow and there was a whole priestly hierarchy that controlled access. Their language was arcane and if you weren't 'one of them' then you were treated almost as subhuman. This year, or thereabouts, saw the first microprocessors (I've still got my 1972 Intel databook) and it was pretty obvious which way things were going. By the late 1970s we were putting micros in everything -- yes, things were klunky and a bit slow and we were all limited by budget but suddenly computing became accessible -- democratized, if you will. By 1982 I was on my fourth or fifth professional project -- not business applications, but control. I got involved with developing PC (clones) in the US, I had systems networked by 1985 -- all prototype, all slow but you could see where things were headed.

    The "professionals" were never very far away, though. Making the simple complicated, always assuming that people who were not like them were somewhat lesser mortals and generally tying up the technology in Voodoo. The Web was a brilliant example of this -- its such a simple idea, the extension of hypertext into networking space, but its taken them practically half a century to get to grips with fundamental shortcomings like inefficient protocols and the security issues behind 'push' technology (for example). Complexity is where the money is and between marketing always going for the quick dollar and endless legions of people who won't say 'no' or even 'wait' and definitely won't do anything that will make their job more accessible we've just built chaos. Fortunately its just froth and I daresay new systems and methods will eventually replace it and the cycle will begin anew.

  20. Double D

    Food for thought

    An excellent article which will probably be interpreted differently depending on the age of the reader.

    I'm 68

  21. clayusmcret

    From the user's perspective (having started with a Tandy TX 1000 8MHZ with a massive 12MHZ Boost capability), every single upgrade comes with some sort of downgrade; something we've come to use daily that was tossed aside willy-nilly as perceived (from the developer's perspective) as unimportant. Someday an upgrade won't take away useful aspects of the previous version. Someday.

    1. lowwall

      Having started with a TRS-80 Model 1 4k, I saw no downside in the replacement of the cassette recorder with a floppy drive.

  22. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    FAIL

    As exciting as the future

    holds, please remember that if in 1982 you told people that you could have a handheld gadget that allowed you to talk to nearly every person on the planet, and contained the sum total of human knowledge that you only had to ask a question about and it would be presented to you, they would never of believed you .....especially the bit where 99.9% of users used it to watch cat videos and call each other rude names.

  23. WubbleU

    Don't Panic

    Just remember those friendly yellow letters.

    Thanks be to Douglas Adams.

  24. F0ulRaven

    Whatever we create, history has shown us, we can be assured the next generation will totally misunderstand our intentions, and pivot in an absurd direction.

  25. nobody1111

    > From the day Steve Jobs walked onstage in January 2007 with the first iPhone, only twelve years passed before half of the adults on Earth owned a smartphone...

    And this useless date matters how?

    1st smart phone, with touch screen - 1994 - IBM

    1st downloadable apps - 1997 - Nokia

    1st internet capable phone - 2001 - Nokia

    1st nothing particularly special or noteworthy - 2007 - Apple

    1. jake Silver badge

      I have a bronze plaque on the wall in my office.

      It reads (in beautiful Copperplate) "On this spot, on August 15th 1958, absolutely nothing of note happened". We celebrate this momentous date by having a big party every year.

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