Woz says Apple, Google and Facebook will be around in 2075 | Hacker News Reader

Woz says Apple, Google and Facebook will be around in 2075

cnet.com

22 pointsrbanffy9 comments

serious question: why do we think that woz has some sort of ability to predict the future more than anyone else? this is a common theme in tech: someone has a shitload of knowledge in one domain and then they instantly have notoriety to give opinions on completely different topics?

Yes, because you have to be pretty capable plus lucky to make it in a fundamental new way, there's a better chance you can be successful in the future. But you see people being really lucky too.

I think he's a credible futurist. He obviously has the fundamental electrical engineering background, which helps.

He is also CONSTANTLY chiming in about every little new smartphone feature or business move in the computing space. That at least signifies he's keeping track of what's factually happening.

On top of that he seems to be a unique thinker. That's not a value judgement, maybe he's a bad thinker. But he's often happy to disagree with conventional wisdom, and has his own framework from which he understands the world.

I think those three things together make for someone who will be good at predicting at least some things. Which things to rely on Woz for is, as with every futurist, mostly an exercise for the reader.

Facebook is definitely the most vulnerable. I don't know why everyone puts them in the same class as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Facebook could easily go the way of AOL Instant Messenger and Myspace. A single person probably couldn't create an operating system to rival MacOS or Windows, or create a search engine that could rival Google. But a single person could EASILY create a social network that rivals the Facebook.

I was a college freshman in 2005, and an early adopter of facebook. After 10 years, I'm definitely burned out. I wouldn't be surprised if others burn out after 10 years as well.

Mark Zuckerbergs says that the idea behind facebook was that you could just type someone's name into facebook.com, and then find out information about them. But as the network got larger and larger, facebook has had to increase user privacy. Now if you're not "friends" with someone, you can't really find out much about them, or even send them a message. And what if you delete a "friend" after you contact them thinking that you won't need to contact them again? Then you have to send them another friend request!

It gets very awkward after 10 years. You end up with too many friends. Then you delete a bunch of people. But maybe you delete too many.

The only way it works is if you never delete anybody. But if you never delete anybody, you'll end up with thousands of friends. The problem with this, is that if you want to post anything you have to comfortable sharing with everyone you've ever met.

And the same goes for the feed. If you end up with 1,000 friends, you get all this crap in your feed that you don't care about.

Facebook is fucked and it's going to $0. Same goes for Snap Inc. Those goofy fucking filters will only stay novel for so long.

you can unfollow all your contacts (your wall will be empty), post nothing and use Facebook purely as contact list, that's how i used it before i ditched it completely

i will be actually surprised if Facebook will be here as social network in ten years, new generation abandoned it already and also older people are leaving, essentially only one who will stay there will be old people (50+) lazy to learn new things

I think Fazebook would still be around for decades, its social network on the other hand would probably become a digital graveyard, a chronicle of sorts that social scientist will use to study behavioral changes. For now the youngsters use instantgram and whatsup, tomorrow when it's some other thing they will just buy it and would get the users it needs so they probably will continue to have a bunch of data to sell to their customers. Also Facbook is more of a information company than tech giants like Googel, Microfrost and Appel. /intentionally misspelled their names btw

In most circles, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft are collectively considered the "Big Four". Some throw in Amazon to round out the "Big Five".

Do you think he left Microsoft out on purpose?

Well he might be buying into the idea that desktop computing is dying (which I don't know if I agree with). Maybe that would be too much for Microsoft to survive.

He included IBM in referring to Apple's size. So I don't think it's intentional... just like he didn't mention Amazon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com