Old man here… The first online bubble was probably the dot.com bubble of the late 90s, when lots of people first went “This internet thing is amazing and we’re all going to make millions!” I remember boo.com being one of the first high-profile crashes, but pretty soon a lot of that first wave of internet retail businesses folded, with notable exceptions like Amazon, of course.
Comment on Will AI Startups End Up Like Blockchain Startups?
yarr@feddit.nl 1 week agoI was racking my brains for hype that goes further back… before blockchain there was mobile phones / apps getting hyped (although the whole world DOES use a phone, so I guess there’s that) and then before that was web, but I don’t think either of those bubbles were quite as insane as blockchain / AI in terms of “what they promised vs. what we got”.
br3d@lemmy.world 1 week ago
jrs100000@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Thats the investor play here. They know most of the hyped companies will end up like AOL or pets.com, but you’ll also have a Google and an Amazon thrown in there which will pay for it all eventually.
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 1 week ago
End up like AOL and get big enough to buy time Warner and make a lot investors very rich? I feel like your downplaying the success of aol. Last I heard that whatever was left of them in Yahoo was supposedly still making money.
iii@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Self driving cars, social media, 3D printing.
It does seem to get louder and more agressive each cycle, yes. But then again, all media is.
yarr@feddit.nl 1 week ago
RIGHT! Good call! I almost forgot those NBC segments “Joe goes to the store now, but in the future he’ll simply 3D print a new sofa at home.” Followed by b-roll of misshapen plastic cubes. Needless to say, that didn’t work out. In what I am finding to be a pattern, 3D printing did find some usages here and there, but last time I checked, they’re not in daily use by consumers.