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The End of the Beginning (stratechery.com) 53

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The beginning of technology was about the shift from batch computing in one place to continuous computing everywhere. That era of paradigm changes may be over, which means the real changes are only beginning, argues columnist Ben Thompson. His conclusion: Today's cloud and mobile companies -- Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Google -- may very well be the GM, Ford, and Chrysler of the 21st century. The beginning era of technology, where new challengers were started every year, has come to an end; however, that does not mean the impact of technology is somehow diminished: it in fact means the impact is only getting started. Indeed, this is exactly what we see in consumer startups in particular: few companies are pure "tech" companies seeking to disrupt the dominant cloud and mobile players; rather, they take their presence as an assumption, and seek to transform society in ways that were previously impossible when computing was a destination, not a given. That is exactly what happened with the automobile: its existence stopped being interesting in its own right, while the implications of its existence changed everything.
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The End of the Beginning More

The End of the Beginning

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  • Technology? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @09:02AM (#59598792)

    The beginning of technology predated computing machines by centuries if not millennia.

  • Next phase (Score:4, Insightful)

    by byteherder ( 722785 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @09:08AM (#59598804)
    We have gone from batch job computing to real time (continuous) computing. The next phase will be ubiquitous computing. We already have it today in some domains. Think about the computer in your car or autopilot on a plane. Ubiquitous computing is going to expand and touch every facet of our lives.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      I fail to understand the fundamental difference between batch and ubiquitous. Way I see it is batch that run often enough turns into ubiquitous.

      The real distinction/innovation would be self-adjusting code, where based on a feedback loop and available data the next execution runs differently from the previous while still remaining deterministic. There are very few cases of this currently happening - mostly learning and AI researchers trying (and failing) to produce something useful for a very narrow set of

      • Batch - the computer processes all the items every X hours
        Continuous - the computer processes the item when it's ready (event-driven, pipeline)
        Ubiquitous - computer? The code is in the lightbulb, the heater, the fridge ...

        • ** Ubiquitous **
          - a _lot_ a potential attack targets if connected to any network
          - security holes
          - nightmare to keep everything updated (requires provider to provide fixes!)
          - make it nearly impossible to repair it yourself : just send it to a landfill and by a new one (your wallet and earth thanks you for that!)
          - ...

          I have an old fridge at home without any "computer" in it. It works perfectly for yearsssss. A lot of friend/family members buying new one have a lot of problems and are jealous of my fridge that

        • Hmmm, as I see it:
          batch - user submits job, picks up the results later. (often submitted over a network to a server)
          continuous - much like a batch system but more free form and the job server is custom instead of being proprietary to the system manufacturer.
          ubiquitous - your watch sends your personal data to big advertising/tech companies.

          Ie, I think that Jenkins is in essence a batch system.

          • > batch -
            > continuous -
            > ubiquitous -

            > think that Jenkins is in essence a batch system

            Interesting. What do you think CI/CD stands for?

            • Continuous Integration via batch server? It is very like a classic batch server when it comes to nightly builds and the like, offloading work to a different system because the results don't need to be immediate, etc. Does the presence of an on-demand build suddenly make this continuous? Continuous implies that there's never a pause.

              • "Continuous" may not be the best word. Better words might be "event-driven" or "push".

                Here is the difference as I see it:

                Batch - does a build once a week, once a day, whatever. Basically time-based.

                Continuous - whenever you PUSH a commit, Jenkins builds and tests it.

                There is no four-hour pause between the time you push and the daily build job. Pushing causes the build, completion of the build causes the tests to run, successful tests cause deployment to staging.

                You mentioned "nightly builds". Nightly wh

                • Ok. Batch systems I have dealt with in the past weren't always on a schedule. A scientist would submit a job and then pick up results later. It would run at very low priority so that it didn't affect logged in users, I/O and page swaps were limited, and more time was allocated to it at night as well. Generally very long running programs (simulations often in the cases I know of). But you could submit the job in the morning and have results later in the day.

        • Asimov's "The Last Question" [archive.org] (p. 6) uses ubiquitous computing as a supporting plot element. Just replace "AC! On which Galaxy did mankind originate?" with "Siri! What's the temperature outside?"
        • I was thinking along the lines of

          Batch - you write a check and it comes out of your checking account that night
          Continuous - you pay with a debit card and it get deducted from your account while you are standing at the checkout.
          Ubiquitous - you never stop at the checkout counter but walk out with your groceries and the scanner on the door totals you purchases and transfers your bitcoin using Apple Pay.

    • We didn't really leave batch computing. There's still a big need for a program that runs from start to end and leaves behind the results of the computation. That may be payroll processing, a scientific data analysis, or a mightly build of software. "Continuous" computing mostly isn't continuous - it's very often a lot of tiny programs or routines that operate on a database under the control of a server, not that much different from yesteryear's batch processing server.

      • I think you are right in saying we really didn't leave batch computing. We just broke up the batches into tiny pieces and wrapped the execution in code that feeds the input and captures the output, preparing it for the next process in the chain. Distributed computing (so-called Cloud) is really just taking these tiny batch executions and using someone else's computers to do it. It's still the stop-start, try-catch routines, just a lot more complicated because of the code that wraps the executions. And when

  • Stupid Presumption (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @09:14AM (#59598828)

    Technology has been accelerating since the first ancestor of Homo Sapien decided, "hey, this thing I just found can get me closer to my objective." We've been at the end of the beginning for the better part of a million years, and we're going to be at the end of the beginning for the better part of the next million years. And then the next million years after that.

    Even computing technology is just in its birthing stage. The author of the article is delusional to think that we've been on some trajectory where "store your data on someone else's server" is a destination or even a waypoint. He's also delusional to think that the current tech industry is going to even faintly resemble the tech industry (if there even is one) of even 50 years from now.

    • since the first ancestor of Homo Sapien decided, "hey, this thing I just found can get me closer to my objective."

      You misspelled "this thing I found can get me laid."

      • since the first ancestor of Homo Sapien decided, "hey, this thing I just found can get me closer to my objective."

        You misspelled "this thing I found can get me laid."

        That's projection dude. "closer to my objective" is closer to reality, be it mating, finding food, killing something for dinner, bone, antler or leather, or killing something/someone that wants to eat/kill/displace you.

        • I think CrimsonAvenger is on to something.

          All those other things (finding food, killing something for dinner, bone, antler or leather, or killing something/someone that wants to eat/kill/displace you) are only important if they allow you to survive long enough to find a mate and reproduce, or help others in your tribe/community to do this, thus guaranteeing your genetic contribution carries on to the next generation.

          Hence, the meaning of life (in this case) is boiled down to doing whatever it takes to mak

    • Nah, he's just pointing out the difference between Tommy Shelby taking flak for driving a car instead of riding a horse, and every 16 year old expecting a car for their birthday by default.

      Computer tech used to be the first case, now it's the second.

  • it was the military industrial complex (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @09:27AM (#59598882) Journal

    it was the military industrial complex that changed everything with the big autos. That really began in WWI and was cemented by WWII. The pre-war (WWII) auto industry was still pretty wide open. It was after the two wars pumped massive dollars into the existing players and technical advances plus major regulatory intervention started raising the entry barriers to the point that new entrants rarely went into the auto manufacturing-business directly but rather chose some other auto-industry space to enter.

    The economics of the typical American house hold also changed allot thru that era, and that led to both the ubiquity of the car and business that catered to them, restaurants, motels, auto clubs, drivins, clothing styles and brands, etc. Yes those things adapted because people had cars and were in them and in the service industry you serve people where they are at. However the market for a all those things existed in a different form before the car and their explosion, I suggest had more to do with the change in relative wealth of the middle class than the auto. All things being equal in a world without cars but the same post war economy otherwise (yes impossible but bear with me) you would have still had middle class tourists (something largely new after WWII) but they would have been riding trains etc, and it would have been big late 19th-century style Hotels near attractions and rail depots rather than motels along highways but the industry would have still grown..

    Computing devices are becoming ubiquitous but the wealth picture and basic economics of housholds still looks a lot like the pre-dot comedy 90's after interest rates came down. Unemployment is low but wages have not grown relative to other costs. I don't see computing being the game changer here a lot people seem to think it is. Retail and communications have changed a lot and those are by no means small changes but the basic day to day structure of our lives hasnt really be altered and I don't think it will be by the 'tech industry'

    • "Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY!"

      Is there someplace, like maybe on your /. Journal, where I can read your thoughts on WHY you oppose mandatory direct election of US Senators? Bear in mind, prior to the 17th amendment, many US states already adopted this practice.

      We now resume our regularly scheduled Slashdot discussion.

  • FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Sarten-X ( 1102295 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @10:03AM (#59599014) Homepage

    Here, let me fix that summary for you...

    The business landscape shows that computing is now a mature technology platform.

    See? Wasn't too hard.

    The lifecycle of computing technology is no different from automobiles, firearms, horses, agriculture, or any other major technology. First it gains acceptance, then ubiquity, then advancement, before finally being assumed as a base state as the next big technology takes the public focus. These stages roughly coincide with each human generation, as children grow up with a technology to become adults unimpressed by the status quo.

    • ^THIS

    • Few of the pre-19th century innovations were single-generation. Something like agriculture took millennia that we know of, before it was taken for granted enough to be a solid foundation for the next major advance. Yes, the last couple of centuries had much faster Gartner cycles (haha)

  • Can't anybody see how wrong all of this is?? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2020 @10:04AM (#59599018)

    Having not your own home server, including P2P p9-style networking with personal name resolution, directory, messaging, file transfer, site hosting, ect . . .
    but some centralized corporations holding all your data like .. pffhhh ... somewhere [youtu.be], as if it was their property, to mine the living crap out of it.

    . . .

    Having not small programs on your computer that do one thing and do it right, that you can combine like Lego, with all data being simple files, to use your computer as a computer . . .
    but monolithic black box appliances where you need a new one for every permutation thinkable, and running on an OS that runs *on another OS*, with the only difference being that it is shittier, wastes more resources, and you have to fetch it from the above "somewhere" again every damn time.

    . . .

    Not paying developers once for their work that they did once, but paying leeches that prey on them infinitely for all eternity every time you use that already paid work.
    And calling it "property", to justify said robbery, in total ignorace of physical reality.

    . . .

    This shit has to stop. Seriously!
    We can't let completely and utterly incompetent idiots define the path of progress! People that literally actually can't tell a computer from an appliance. That have never even written a single line of code. Even just shell script. That drag is all down to the dumbest common denominator. And are called a "visionary" or "genius" for it.

    We need to take back leadership!
    It is our responsibility! We too are to blame, for this insane parallel unsiverse of crazy route that it took and would take!

    • your second point is becoming the sole determinant of when I use/upgrade to new programs or systems. drives me crazy...

    • Yes. To put it bluntly in marketing terms, don't give away your stuff to "the cloud". Stop renting computing power or software as much as possible. Chip in... teach your friends and relatives, or at least advise them against it.

    • Agreed, but the consolidation of money and power, which also result from streamlining/efficiency/convenience, are even larger issues than the consolidation of software. More tech = bigger pyramids = whoever is at the top controls more people underneath.

    • Having not your own home server, including P2P p9-style networking with personal name resolution, directory, messaging, file transfer, site hosting, ect . . .

      While I personally love your dream, only a tiny fraction of people are capable of managing their own servers, etc.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • In manufacturing, you needed a LOT of investment to get started, hence why big players like GM and Ford maintained their lead even though they were poorly run after they let the unions take over. Only when shipping became cheaper did these big players get in trouble because suddenly they had competition from established companies overseas.

    In tech, there are no investments to get started. If you have a good product, you can get off the ground with some chump change and using the cloud you can scale quickly a

    • It's interesting that, thanks to places like China, you only need chump change to start manufacturing something.

    • In tech, there are no investments to get started.

      Eh, that's not quite the case though. It depends on what you want to build, but a lot of low hanging fruit have already been picked. For example, we're past the stage where a guy could start a computer hardware company in his garage, like Wozniak and Jobs did at one time. Similarly, if you want to build a cloud company to compete with AWS or Azure you need a heck of a lot of investment. Even if you want to build a solid piece of enterprise software, you still need a largish team and need to invest in a lot

  • Mental masturbation at it's finest. For a debunking on disruption read https://www.newyorker.com/maga... [newyorker.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by epine ( 68316 )

      I like Jill Lepore. Thanks for linking that. I discovered her at Jill Lepore on Nationalism, Populism, and the State of America [econtalk.org] (scroll down to skim transcript) and then went on to read her American history book, which I thought was well written and nicely balanced.

      It's not my area, so I can't vouch for her scholarship, but nothing set off any alarm bells, and that doesn't happen every day. She's certainly a voluble conversationalist, which I tend to rate as a plus attribute.

  • Take your singularity and shove it up the black hole that is your ass.

  • Back in the 1970's, time-sharing was a big deal. Put a mainframe (or a large mini) in a data center, hook up lots of phone lines / modems and sell service by the hour to folks who bought (or leased) teletypes or terminals. I recall Radio Shack selling briefcase-sized teletypes, with 300 baud acoustic-coupler modems, so that people on the road could access data / services on time-sharing systems from payphones, wherever. Years later, the Tandy Model 100 had a 300 bps modem for exactly that purpose.

    Woz d

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