This is the premise of 'disrupt', isn't it? That the existing business models or technological solutions are so thoroughly shaken by the appearance of something new that doesn't pass for a mere iteration of the same. Electricity was not directly comparable to steam, despite having some of the same uses at first, cars were quite different from horses, and the packet-switched internet behaves differently from circuit-switched telephone lines.
Part of this phenomenon of even experts unable to predict the new is that often our current technology is capped by our societal understanding of physics. Before the Wrights and other early pioneers, we knew that powered heavier-than-air flying was possible for light things like birds, but weren't sure whether the same applied to large, heavy frames, or how we'd be able to deliver enough power to the machine while keeping the weight down. But after a couple of early success, a vibrant field of haphazard experimentation and serious scientific research opened up, and we learned a lot about aerodynamic lift.
Before the transistor, it was difficult to seriously posit that electricity-powered, non-mechanical computers would be ubiquitous not just to the point of every government and large enterprise having them, but also every single person possessing multiple miniaturized versions on their person. The invention of integrated circuits was a transformational achievement: it enabled us to go from having very scarce computing capacity to having a slight excess, and so new programs emerged to harness that ability to do calculation. VR and AR in turn aren't that transformative yet: they're simply video games where a portion of the input comes from the 'real world'.
Today, we're at a UI/UX/AI/ML crisis, where we have immense computing resources at our disposal and still lack an effective ability to communicate our intent with the machine. We dip down to the ancient metaphor of manipulating a pre-set UI with a pointer like a mouse or our fingers or our eyes, or we have to speak audibly to those within earshot so a microphone can capture our command, ascertain some meaning, then map it to one of many predefined actions. These seem like the dark ages. It's not hard to guess that something revolutionary is going to happen in this arena, and will require actual scientific discoveries to make it possible.
Part of this phenomenon of even experts unable to predict the new is that often our current technology is capped by our societal understanding of physics. Before the Wrights and other early pioneers, we knew that powered heavier-than-air flying was possible for light things like birds, but weren't sure whether the same applied to large, heavy frames, or how we'd be able to deliver enough power to the machine while keeping the weight down. But after a couple of early success, a vibrant field of haphazard experimentation and serious scientific research opened up, and we learned a lot about aerodynamic lift.
Before the transistor, it was difficult to seriously posit that electricity-powered, non-mechanical computers would be ubiquitous not just to the point of every government and large enterprise having them, but also every single person possessing multiple miniaturized versions on their person. The invention of integrated circuits was a transformational achievement: it enabled us to go from having very scarce computing capacity to having a slight excess, and so new programs emerged to harness that ability to do calculation. VR and AR in turn aren't that transformative yet: they're simply video games where a portion of the input comes from the 'real world'.
Today, we're at a UI/UX/AI/ML crisis, where we have immense computing resources at our disposal and still lack an effective ability to communicate our intent with the machine. We dip down to the ancient metaphor of manipulating a pre-set UI with a pointer like a mouse or our fingers or our eyes, or we have to speak audibly to those within earshot so a microphone can capture our command, ascertain some meaning, then map it to one of many predefined actions. These seem like the dark ages. It's not hard to guess that something revolutionary is going to happen in this arena, and will require actual scientific discoveries to make it possible.