Item — HN Reader

>Computer science peaked in the 80s-90s. There arent bold new ideas to add, just incremental progress.

Any time I see a statement like this around here it never seems to include a suggestion. That's not to say there isn't something to be done, but when I think about my computer or phone there's no new idea I'm wishing they had.

>I can't think of a new mode of communication invented in the last decades.

Human communication is confined to the human senses. So again, what are we missing? What should be developed?

1 comments

Usually novel ideas are not something we wished we had (like faster horses). Ground breaking ideas are technologies that are enabling new ecosystems, like the WWW, the iPhone, and probably in the future, VR. Even with mobile tech, we still have not exploited them to the max largely because they are overly dependent on the cloud, making simple things needlessly complicated (like transferring a file to a nearby computer).

> what are we missing? What should be developed?

We can only speculate, but despite all the tech thrown at it, our communication is still pretty mundane, serial dialogues. A technology like the internet could enable new modes of organizing information in which the output is more than the sum of the parts (like a spreadsheet for minds). Wikipedia did this, and open source software. Another is the ability to have direct payments without middlemen (what blockains do), that would enable a ton of new possibilities.