Predicting the future of the Internet is easy | Hacker News Reader

Predicting the future of the Internet is easy

cdixon.org

75 pointsjeffmiller12 comments

Some day, real people (non-techies, non-Westerners, people who are not 20-something males, etc) will almost certainly be about as plugged in as the mean HNer is currently. I cannot conceive of this happening without generating staggering amounts of wealth.

Groupon just invented a new industry with yearly sales which are quickly going to eclipse 10^10 dollars by figuring out how to do distribution for local businesses over the Internet. I think in 2020 that will be remembered by historians with special interest in modestly successful advances. Somebody is going to do something as revolutionary as Groupon/Google/Facebook to a market as big as "healthcare" or "India", and (to misquote an amusing line from Social Network), they'll be able to buy Harvard and use it as their pingpong table.

It's easy to forget how young and immature the internet and even the software industry is. Software development is still in its alchemy stages, with as many (if not more) snake oil salesmen as there are people doing sound, repeatable engineering and science. And as much content as is on the internet today it's still a far cry from all of it, which is a near inevitability at this point. Every book, every magazine, every audio recording, every movie, every tv show, every home video, every bit of information that was ever typed or written onto a piece of paper, everything. As we get closer to that things will change, we have only just barely and experimentally started putting anything of substance online and the result has been staggering.

Nobody has seen anything yet.

Im not sure the last time Chris made the front page of HN, but for some reason reading this was absolutely a breath of fresh air for me. The internet will keep doing its thing whether facebook IPOs or the 'bubble' bursts. Focus on your own work, the stuff that really matters, and you will inevitably succeed. Whatever the next big wave is, you'll miss it if you're too busy fretting about what has already come and gone.

I'm not sure finance & law are of no value. Whatever may be wrong with the financial system, it isn't entirely maintained for the benefit of $GS (or hate figure du jour). I can imagine some of its functions replaced by less formal structures though.

Law is much harder to see replaced, even if flawed & incredibly inefficient. Law of little value? Shall we try without?

With simpler laws, you might get by with more stupid lawyers.

Like, managing an index fund can be a part time job or even done by a computer, compare that to the hot shots that hedge funds attract for their active trading.

convincing the upcoming generation to innovate in sectors that have a direct impact on the quality of peoples’ lives (Internet, healthcare, energy, education) instead of wasting time on sectors that were historically prestigious (e.g. finance and law) but add little to negative economic and societal value.

And that, my friends, is why we're in this mess to begin with - industries that don't generate any progress, and therefore should not become profit centers. Just like ISP's and other utilities, in an idea world they should be regulated and forced to compete on a fair and open market.

that was my favorite line as well. now that startup pursuits have become semi-mainstream, i think you'll see the next generation of parents less inclined to push their kids down a carved out path.

if parents really want to see their kids "make them proud," they won't push them towards a law degree...but rather encourage them to change the world.

one of these days, these law students will figure out that there's just not as much work as there once was and we could really use their expertise to move the ball forward instead of slowing things down.

He highlights finance as one of the industries inevitably disrupted. I hope he's right but I have personally always viewed finance industry profits as a tax that cannot be avoided at any cost less than the cost of starting over. Is there hope that I'm mistaken?

One possible example that already happened: The internet contributed to the more-or-less death of the traditional full-service stock broker in the late-90s, with the rise of electronic discount brokerages like E*Trade.

I do agree that it's not clear it has or will in aggregate reduce the finance industry's take, though. More comprehensive disruption of the finance sector by technology would find a way to reduce finance's total cost, the way VOIP completely disrupted traditional telecoms. Finance firms seem remarkably adept at keeping the total take from falling overall, though, even when particular fees are forced downwards.

Much of the mathematics of finance is actually as new as the internet. It has yet to be automated...

Also, the mathematics of finance is still very, very much under development. Volatility of volatility model, anybody?

In some way we will always have a need for a system which allocates capital from those who wants to lend it to those who can convince others that they can make more money by lending it to them. Destroying this is neither possible nor desirable.

But we can definitely destroy the part of finance where the government pays money to companies like Goldman sucks or try to bail out companies.

Ha, I liked this one: "we’ll look back in amazement that in 2011 we still used brokers to help us find houses" - I haven't used a broker to find a house in 12 years, actually.

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