Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

Comment by y-c-o-m-b | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like enormous cultural and technological hardware advancements were made between 1990-2010 that affected people on a national or global level. The advances were revolutionary. I have a hard time associating the last decade the same way. To me, the 2010-2020 decade has been stagnant.

My overall sentiments, more or less:

1990->2000 we went from very few people owning personal computers to wider adoption of PCs and broadband was gaining traction (I personally had @Home cable internet in 1998).

2000->2010 mass adoption of cell phones, starting with the flip phones to pocket PCs to the first iPhone in 2007. Social media (MySpace, The Facebook). Peer to peer networking, piracy (The Pirate Bay). Laptops. The first tablets.

2010->2020 mild improvements on the stuff from the previous two decades

EDIT: I'll give the last decade Uber (although I've only used it once) and AirBnb since that was a huge shift as well, but my overall feeling remains the same.

Copying my answer from another thread

I am surprised with no mention of Smartphone. Which is arguably the most important innovation in modern history. 2010s, Smartphone ( iPhone 3GS at the time ) went from niche to 4B users ( iOS, Androids and KaiOS ), that is nearly every person on earth above age 14 in developed countries. I dont think there has ever been a product or technology innovation as important that spread faster than Smartphone. And it changes everyone's life. The post mentioned of Google, Facebook and Amazon empire, all partly grows to this point because of Smartphones. Technology companies together now worth close to 10 Trillions. The whole manufacturing supply chain exists and became huge in Shenzhen because of Smartphone. It was the reason why TSMC managed to catch up to Intel in both capacity and leading edge node. It was the reason why we went from 3G to 5G in mere 10 years because of all the investment kept pouring it. It was the reason why everyone went on to the Internet and had Internet economy. It brought a handheld PC and Internet to a much wider audience. I would even argue it was the Smartphone innovation that saved us from the post 2008 Financial Crisis doom as it created so much wealth, innovation and opportunities.

There is a tendency to undervalue recent advancements because they haven't had the same amount of time to demonstrate an impact on the world.

I would point to the 2010's as the rise of two phenomena:

- Social networking and meme culture

- Explosive growth of software

These will prove to be just as important as the developments of the 2000's, but haven't had the time for other developments to build on them.

Electric cars really started gaining traction in the 2010s, with the Leaf, Model S, Zoe, etc.

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