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Comment by rgoddard | Hacker News Reader

The other question to consider is if the revolution is local, does that really matter for the society at large? The startups are creating value for the rest of society, regardless of where the startups are located. Using the internet as the means of distribution, decouples the location of the business from the consumers of the product, thus allowing the startups to have a central location. The business revolution will only matter for a subset of companies, mostly software companies.

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The fact that the Industrial Revolution was localized mattered a lot to the regions that were left behind. It made them the victims in the ensuing era of colonialism.

That's true, but meaningless. History is only our friend when it applies. A lot of technology is now software based and thanks to the web, it is immediately distributed evenly to all those who have computers with internet access. While that still leaves out a large chunk of the world, it gives no substantial benefit to the place where the technology was born.

What about e.g. language barriers?

Open source and internet help to spread software source. But the mindset of how a piece of software solve users' problems are still limited the location that the software is created.

It will be more like a culture barrier. For a culture that has no sense of custom satisfaction, the user interface for e-commerce will never be as good as Apple or Amazon. We as technologists sometime forget a lot of our assumptions are based on our environment.

That's a perfect reply. You're absolutely right, but I know a lot of companies who've made a fortune doing "Ebay for Switzerland", etc. Businesses will step in to fill that gap to a certain extent but the applications themselves reflect the hub culture. Excellent point.

A lot of technology is now software based and thanks to the web, it is immediately distributed evenly to all those who have computers with internet access.

The first half is correct, but not the second half. A few examples: the software that runs on spy satellites, the software used to design stealth planes, the software used in sigint, "smart bomb" guidance systems, the software used to design nuclear weapons, etc.

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