Ask HN: Is technology headed for a crash?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4914229

by diminium • 14 years ago

2 2 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Or a deep depression? Or stagnation? A while back I posted this "Ask HN: Are tech companies becoming more unrealistic in hiring?" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4667524)

In the world of finance, when things become unrealistic, reality has a tendency to knock down the house of cards causing everything to collapse. Could something similar happen with technology?

DigitalSea• 14 years ago

Technology is the future. If by stagnation of tech you mean people trying to found the next Instagrams and Facebook's of the world then perhaps you might be right but if you know how to code in Ruby on Rails, Node.JS and can write HTML/CSS you can build your own startup for next to nothing.

I do think some kind of bubble is about to burst, but I see a tech bubble bursting as an opportunity for others with real ideas to have their moment in the sun. When you think about it, the financial and tech sectors are closely tied together, feeding off of one another. Venture capitalists make their money investing and startups make their bread and butter from said investment.

kls• 14 years ago

The market it cyclical, where it bubbles like it did in the .com boom, people try to push past the current technical limitations, some succeed in doing so while others are just too far ahead and the technology never materializes in a usable way. Take mobile for example, it's been around since the Apple Newton, but it took a whole lot of unrelated technologies maturing before it became the market it is today, along the way there where several mobile booms and busts. When the PDA was coupled with a phone and wireless access got to the speed of at least bearable, then the market finally saw the expansion some of the early believed was there but unable to get to.

This has happened with the PC, Internet, Mobile, Webification of Applications and now it's happening with infrastructure and SaaS. The market will stagnate again, just as it did after the .com bust, but that is the time in which the innovators work to tweak their ideas for the next big push.

Ask HN: Is technology headed for a crash?

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