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.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/01/08/1356231/the-end-of-the-beginning?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed