Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

Comment by red_admiral | Hacker News Reader

While the idea is sound, a lot of the examples are questionable to the point where I wonder if this is just another "blockchain is the future" shill article. Private clouds are extremely big business for FAANG and some governments, for example (I believe there's a particularly big one in Utah). iTunes is doing fine last time I checked. Pokemon Go is AR not VR and so on.

The problem is that for every iPhone, there are 99 other technologies that are not adapted to the world, and fail as a consequence (3D TV where you have to wear polarising glasses at home or sit at exactly the right angle to the screen, anyone?). It's not a hard problem to look back at what has already happened and explain it with your pet theory, as long as your theory is sufficiently flexible. Using a theory to predict what's not happened yet, and getting it right - now that's where the real money is. The model as presented here doesn't seem very strong at identifying what upcoming technologies will be the strong ones, but really good at explaining things retroactively. As an investor at least, that's of limited use.

On blockchains specifically, I can imagine a world where in 10 years' time bitcoin has completely collapsed. In fact, Satoshi has the possibility to create such a world if they still have the private key to their initial coins. I can also imagine a world where private/regulated chains are widely used and permissionless ones less so, or one where permissionless chains have taken off in a way they haven't yet. It's really too early to tell, although the Ethereum/DAO experiment makes me pessimistic.

I completely agree with this. After reading some of the examples in the list (E-Sports vs. Traditional Sports, Hybrid Cars vs Electric Cars), it was clear the concept was not fully baked. This one needs to go back in the oven for a bit.

In the case of hybrids vs. electrics, it's fine if you want to say hybrids are like the Blackberry - an initiating technology that prepares the market for a sweeping, fundamental change. But that's certainly different from Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, two technologies that aim to accomplish different things, or streaming music vs MP3 downloads, which offer two different value propositions in the lease vs. own models.

The idea needs to be more specific, like initiating technology vs. mature technology or evolutionary technology vs. revolutionary technology. One could say the Blackberry or the Palm Pilot was actually the revolution, where the iPhone was the right evolution of that technology to fully capture the market. But now I'm just trying to backfit a backfitted concept.

I've been thinking about this a bit today.

Spolsky's old "Amazon vs Ben and Jerrys" is in my opinion a more mature categorisation of what strong/weak is getting at here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/12/strategy-letter-i-...

I think Paul Graham had an article too on how venture capitalists are not looking for "does this have growth potential" (there are already more traditional capitalists for that called "banks") but "could this have a 1% chance at being the next facebook, even if it has a 99% chance of failing?" In this particular sense, I guess the more radical something looks, the better.

I also remember a HN article a while ago about "how Trello could have been a success" where success means "going unicorn", to which commenters rightly pointed out that Trello IS a success at what it set out to do. Trello would come under "weak" / "ben and jerrys" in this categorisation I suppose, although it's one of the cloud services I use every day and a lot more than most others.

Yes, prediction, even with lots of data points and the ability to extrapolate, is very difficult. Ex post facto analysis is facile. If we consider an alternative definition of strong vs weak. Where technologies that stand the test of time are considered strong. And those that fall into obsolescence are considered weak. Then every technology eventually degrades into obsolescence. Unless based upon first principles: such as fire, the wheel, or books.

As another example, we see this play out in real time with SaaS. I certainly believe web delivery to be a strong tech. And most users prefer its advantages over the alternative. Which is usually some frankenstein hybrid of legacy app servers delivered via virtual terminals on remote windows desktops. Yet the economic activation gap is sufficient, despite rapid development frameworks such as React / Flutter, that investment in a new interface and training and data migration is deemed unnecessary. User pain is subservient to short term cost savings. And so the weak avoid obsolescence much longer than their organic shelf life would warrant.

Based on a couple things you said, you may be misinterpreting the author's meaning of "strong" and "weak".

The article thesis is, "technologies usually arrive in pairs, a strong form and a weak form". It's not a value judgment, and it's not predictive. Meaning: It's not a given that strong forms will be successful. As the article notes, "weak forms of technology can be successful" and may even receive more focus when the strong form falters since "weak technologies appear nearer to mainstream adoption".

> iTunes is doing fine last time I checked.

It's not about iTunes "doing fine", but that selling tracks and albums is just a digital version of the old retail model that's been around forever. Streaming, on-demand music is "strong" (according to the author) because it's a new model for music consumption, and requires changes in both the industry and consumer behavior.

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