Whenever I read dismissive comments about new tech I think that this same people would have dismissed the internet in the early days.. who needs all this complicated stuff when you can just go to the library ???
That being said, by being a skeptic, I think I'm right more than I'm wrong. For every "internet" that I've called wrong, there's a "3D TV" or "Segway" that's I've correctly predicted would fail to live up to the hype.
These revolutionary technologies that shift our daily life come along far less often than people like to predict. Even if the technology is superior to what most people are using there are still a ton of factors standing in the way of mass adoption (see VHS vs Betamax). You know that Tolstoy quote "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way", I kind of feel that way about new technologies. There are a million reasons technologies can fail to catch on, but they have to walk a very narrow path to succeed.
So, as one of those type of people you're asking about, I guess my reaction would be "oh well". I'm right more than I'm wrong and the downsides of a false negative and less than the downsides of a false positive. If thought the internet was a load of crap and I hop on the band wagon a few years late, oh well, it's not like I've missed out on it for ever. On the other hand, if I bought a 3D TV when they first came out, I'd now be stuck with an overpriced TV with a feature that has almost no support.
I mean... yeah, that's my point. When we talk about most of these things we're trying to predict how the world will look years or even decades into the future. Even if you know the technology inside and out, there's too many unknowns to really make an accurate prediction.
If I asked you whether it was going to rain in the desert tomorrow, you could find a bunch of information and come back to me with a fairly informed guess that would probably be right. If I asked you whether it was going to rain in the desert on Jan 1 2030 what would be your answer. You don't know and I'd argue that you can't know, so the best thing you can do is play the probabilities and say "no, it will not rain".
As a consumer, yes. As a founder, there is an opportunity cost to not founding the next Googlebook.
Also, I'd argue that most business aren't founded on some bleeding edge technology. It's a false dichotomy to think that all successful founders embrace new technology and all skeptical founders are doomed to fail. There are plenty of businesses built around doing the same thing everyone else is doing, just faster, easier, or cheaper. Sure a skeptical founder may not create the next Googlebook, but I don't think that really matters.
I notice this bullshit narrative this past year for every over hyped technology.
"X is just like when everyone was dismissing the internet" even though that never happened.
In the early days of the internet, people were either excited by it or had no clue what you were talking about. No one would ever say they would just stick with the library. Just total nonsense.
Someone saying this is probably too young to have used a card catalog at the library.