Technology

That texting would be so popular. Coming from pagers to actual cell phones and being able to hear people talk anywhere was amazing. Going back to text messages seemed counterintuitive.

When the first dotcom bubble burst, I predicted that big companies would buy up all the major websites for fire sale prices and put them behind subscription paywalls. “Pay $30/month and get access to all 400 sites in the Yahoo network.”

I underestimated how easy it is to spin up alternative sites. Most of the media brands I thought of as valuable then are shit now, or gone.

And, like everyone, I didn’t anticipate social media. Even Google was still nascent at the time.

Everything ? I though MS Office woukd fail becase no one will want to close source their data files, i was using an Amiga at the time at home and the file format was standard and you chose the app to use

It started there and just progressed, Apple was a big one, people won't buy into their closed wall'd shenanigans. Wrong again.

Messaging, what a debacle that has turned into. I assumed the system would be standardised and the fight would be over the front end for interoperability, wrong again.

In the mid-nineties I passionately believed that the internet would democratize information and usher in a wonderful new era of well-informed critical thinking and general enlightenment. Basically the opposite has happened.

I sold all of my Apple stock because they wanted to make a phone and I thought that would end poorly, so I should take my profits while I could.

I thought people would learn how to use computers.

It seemed as if most of the millennial generation in wealthy countries did learn to some degree and I expected it to be even more true for younger generations. Those more sophisticated users would enable more sophisticated and flexible applications. Technology would empower individuals while weakening corporations and governments.

Instead, the most reliable recipe for popularizing tech is to dumb it down. Millennials represent a peak of digital literacy (in wealthy countries) and those younger tend to have weaker technical skills.

Around 2009 I predicted that very soon, Linux smartphones you can plug into a docking station to use as a desktop PC would become the standard consumer computing device.

I thought drones were just going to be a fad, but they've become huge, especially in terms of government and corporate surveillance. I should have realized the way it was going when America started using them militarily. American military inventions almost always end up becoming popular consumer products/applications.

When Steam first appeared (and was required to play Half-Life 2 IIRC), I thought that was a ridiculous idea to have a middle man to play a game. Well, what do I know, everyone loves Steam now (yet hates on other launchers).

"Nintendo should admit defeat and focus on making games for other platforms and mobile devices." - Me, after the Wii U and a little before the Switch launched.

When the 3DS came out I was sure it would be a stepping stone to 3D TVs that didn't require glasses.

3D TVs basically died out by now.

In the late nineties, I thought the availability of online knowledge would make universities obsolete.

I thought Apple/most smartphones would never move to USB-C, or away from proprietary chargers. Pleasantly surprised - thank you EU.

I thought wireless controllers were going to be a fad, or at least garbage in their reliability/connection strength.

I thought VR was finally going to take off as the next major gaming experience when the Vive came out. Unfortunately it remains niche.

I thought Linux was going to be unusable for gaming/mainstream use cases for much longer, but Valve has made huge strides on that with Proton, and OSS devs making things like Heroic for other stores has been awesome. Also shoutout to KDE for, well, everything. Krita, KDE connect, Plasma. LibreOffice has also come a very long way.

I also thought we’d never get another steam controller. Also pleasantly surprised.

I wrote a term paper once about how twitter would enable citizen journalism and lead to a more informed public and a healthier, more direct democracy. I got an A.

I was a pretty huge fan of Zune and I still miss it.

The Wii. Previous gen console specs. Silly gimmick controller. Best selling peripheral was a step.

Most popular shit in the history of everything.

I never thought tablet computers would become popular among the mainstream public.

When the iPad first came out, it was functionally worse than even the cheap netbooks, and I didn't see much purpose in the larger screen with phones getting bigger and bigger every year. Wireless display was also already available, so I envisioned people would just cast content to a TV if they really wanted a bigger screen. Even reading articles etc seemed to be already covered by eReaders, which were already available for half a decade by the time the iPad released.

Little did I know how brain rotted people would become.

Tbh I personally still don't see the utility in most tablets, except in specific niches like in digital note taking/drawing, or industrial cases where it becomes a glorified HUD.

I thought cameras on phones were a gimmick. To be fair, they were pretty low quality back then but I still use it to remind myself not to be too overconfident because boy was I wrong.

Around 2000, graphene was a very hot material. I was pretty excited by it and thought carbon-based high-Farad capacitors would essentially replace lead acid and lithium ion batteries in most consumer electronics within a decade, maybe two.

"Bitcoin will never take". I mined a few at the very beginning when it was easy, out of curiosity, and didn't bother backing up because it was useless anyway. Ahem.

Physical buttons on phones would win out over gimmicky touch screens

I hate microsoft but really liked windows phone and cortana. Something about tiles made a lot of sense and the keyboard was clean af.

I am very sure they were the first to have url bar above the keyboard in their browser WHICH WAS VERY HELPFUL BECAUSE YOUR FINGERS ARE ALREADY AT THE BOTTOM HALF OF THE PHONE LIKE OMFG.

like there was so many little things they did that just worked and worked well. rip windows phone, i will tell my grandkids about you.

In the late 90s I saw a piece demonstrating an optical 3d storage system that had a capacity about an order of magnitude greater than the at the time brand new HD DVD and Bluray discs. I assumed this clearly superior format that already had a working demo would obviously kill other optical media. Turns out nobody could figure out how to manufacture one at a price anybody was willing to spend.

I never thought game subscription would take of. The entire concept is stupid to me. Pay per month to *acces selected games but not own them? Take into accoumt 90% of people will play at most 25% of the catalogue. Let's do some math if PS Plus Essentials, where you get 2-4 random titles per month is taken, which costs 9€ per month which if you play down to 25% of the catalogue goes up to 36€ per month (that is you basicly pay 36€ to play that single game which was chosen at random and you still don't own). For that ammount of money I can buy a REAL game I OWN or 5 good games on Steam Sale or GOG.

Still I guess if it sounds good people will smoke it.

To be clear these statistics are purly "Trust me bro" but I doubt someone will play Core Keeper, Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed and NFS: Unbound all in one month enough that it makes sense, and if you can more power to you, but I know those are not most people. Most people play Minecraft or Elder Scrolls or COD or GT etc.

Still feel free to express yours opinion.