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Comment by ViktorRay | Hacker News Reader

The realization that in 2058 some people will be reading comments from 2025 Hacker News threads and will feel amused at all the things we were so confidently wrong about.

;)

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32919

I don't think what the iphone supports will matter much in the long run, it's what devices like these nokias that will have the biggest impact on the future of mobile http://www.nokia.com/A4405104

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No one is going to stop developing in Flash or Java just because it doesn't work on iPhone. Those who wanna cater to the iPhone market will make a "watered down version" of the app. Just the way an m site is developed for mobile browser.Thats it.

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If another device maker come up with a cheaper phone with a more powerful browser, with support for Java and Flash, things will change. Always, the fittest will survive. Flash and java are necessary evils(if you think they are evil).

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So it will take 1 (one) must-have application written in Flash or Java to make iPhone buyers look like fools? Sounds okay to me.

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The computer based market will remain vastly larger than the phone based market. I don't have real numbers off hand, but lets assume 5% of web views are via cellphones

2007 was looking pretty hot - http://web.archive.org/web/20070707022624/http://www.nokia.c...

And the all knowing pg said that the iPhone will never have more than 5% market share

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33083

I mean it had more space than the Nomad and wireless. What else could he have wanted?

That seems like a strange interpretation of the comment you linked. He was responding to the question of how much market share the iPhone needs to make an impact; not predicting an upper bound on the market share.

Read that thread again. pg said iPhone needs at least 5% market share to make the needed impact, that was discussed in the thread.

I can translate the answers to you:

---

> What marketshare do you think iphone needs to make such an impact?

> And why do you think it will gain that huge marketshare?

Because of iPod (because iPod already has quite a bit of market share).

> Its the first "nice looking internet in your pocket". But is that enough to take over the mobile world?

Actually, iPhone is much more than just that.

> First Mover = guaranteed success?

No, of course being first mover does not alone guarantee success.

---

Then again, pg was wrong is his main point that either Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight would take over the world.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32994

Uh, as the page says, these were cheap feature phones for emerging markets. In 2007 Nokia had smartphones vastly more capable than the original iPhone. They just didn’t have a large touchscreen.

A self-proclaimed VC (but really just a business angel syndicate gateway keeper with no real money, as I later found out) once told me (in 2005) "Even if it will be possible to use the Internet from one's phone one day, it will be too expensive for ordinary people to use it."

This was already wrong when he said it to me (I was pitching a mobile question answering system developed in 2004), as then an ugly HTML cousin called WAP already existed. I have never taken any risk capital investor that did not have their own tech exist seriously since then.

Back in the '90s, I read a book called the "Zen of Windows 95 Programming." The author started off with (paraphrased) "If you're reading this 25 years in the future, and are having a laugh, here's the state of things in '95"

I did re-read that section again 25 years later...

Did you have a laugh?

I am terrified to read my own comments from a year ago... I can't even imagine 25 or 30 years from now.

<^> this - adaptability is of far greater utility than stubbornness.

I'm afraid to read what I wrote last month, I cringe at the though of myself reading old posts.

Don't focus on how naive you were then, think about how much you've grown since. Well done!

Imagine if you don't learn anything new in the next 25 years, and all your opinions stay completely stagnant. What a waste of 25 years that will be.

You probably will.

I mean, here's a piece of mine from 25 years ago.

https://archive.org/details/PersonalComputerWorldMagazine/PC...

I stand by that.

But I wrote things for the Register when I started there full-time 3.3 years ago that now I look at with some regret. I'm learning. I'm changing.

We all learn and we all change. That is good. When you stop changing, you are dead.

Don't be worried about changing your mind. Be worried about if you stop doing so.

How about retrospective ranking of comments based on their ability to correctly predict the future? Call it Hacker Old Golds?

Easily available are AskReddit threads from 2014 asking predictions about 2024

Fun fact, Reddit only soft deletes your comments. So all those people using Reddit deletion/comment mangling services to protest only deprive their fellow users of their insights. Reddit Inc. can still sell your data.

It makes reddit less valuable as a source of info.

I already click on reddit search results less after hitting now-dead search results a bunch of times.

That's less views and less mindshare.

Reddit will restore your comments even if you replace them with lorem ipsum with a script.

Back around 2003 our director said "This customer wants to put our camera chip in a phone." I thought it was a dumb idea.

I remember when the first iPhone was released in Jan 2007 that Jobs said all the non-Apple apps would be HTML based.

I thought it was dumb. Release a development environment and there will be thousands of apps that do stuff they couldn't even think of.

The App Store was started in July 2008.

We’re not that optimistic about the future here.

Maybe someone will hide a copy of HN in a durable format in a cave and someone will rediscover it one day.

Last time I checked, parchment was the most durable medium mankind ever used on a regular basis.

I find it an interesting question to ponder what we consider worthwhile retaining for more than 2000 years (from my personal library, perhaps just the Bible, TAOCP, SICP, GEB and Feynman's physics lectures and some Bach organ scores).

EDIT: PS: Among the things "Show HN" has not yet seen is a RasPi based parchment printer...

It would be an interesting project to create an entire archive of books of HN discussions and preserve them for hundreds of years for archivists to explore. I hope they find this comment.

hopefully people have progressed to the point where hn has been completely forgotten

Are you sure?

The husk of slashdot is still around.

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