[lkrubner]

"the age of the intelligent networked machine is just beginning"

This sounds like pure denial. You don't want to face a painful truth, so you create a rationalization. But your sentence could be applied to dozens of other maturing industries, and your sentence would be wrong in every case:

In the 1880s: "There are thousands of oil reserves that no one has discovered yet, therefore the field remains wide open to innovators who want to take a risk on a new field."

And yet, after 1880s, the industry consolidated into a single behemoth. Even as late as the early 21st century, wildcatters could still make some money off a hard to reach patch, if prices were high enough. That didn't change the fact that all the big profits were held by a few near monopoly powers.

In the 1880s: "Much of the country can not yet be reached by train, so this industry is wide open to innovators who want to build new lines."

And yet the train industry consolidated after 1880.

1920s: "In automobiles, there are still vast innovations to be made to make brakes reliable, and someone needs to invent an automatic starter, since hand crakes are now dangerous, given the growing size of the engines. And an automatic transmission would be an amazing breakthrough, if anyone can figure out how to do it. The space is wide open for innovators who can solve any of the many problems that remain in the auto industry."

But the auto industry consolidated from that point forward.

In the 1980s: "The CPU is a new idea and the path forward for processors is still wide open to innovation."

And yet, Motorola was founded in 1928, Digital Equipment Corporation in 1957, Intel in 1968 and AMD was founded in 1969. The dominant powers for computer processors started a long time ago, the field consolidated when much was still unknown about the ideal strategy for processors.

There are industries that clearly have not yet emerged as stable entities with a clear path forward. Genetic engineering is an obvious one. But the software industry is clearly much more consolidated than it was in the past.

[willholloway]

The train, the automobile, and the microprocessor were all harbingers of exponentially increasing wealth and opportunity. Each technology lowered the cost of starting and running businesses, as well as giant ancillary businesses and markets.

The microprocessor preceded the gold rush we're eulogizing here.

They all spawned brand new ecosystems that created entirely new opportunities for entrepreneurs to create wealth. The train even unified some nation states that didn't exist.

[lkrubner]

It's possible that you did not understand the original article. Or perhaps you did not read it. When you write:

"Each technology lowered the cost of starting and running businesses"

No, not in those industries. When an industry consolidates, the cost of the starting a new business in that industry skyrockets. Eventually it becomes impossible to start a new company in that industry. That clearly happened for trains and automobiles, microprocessors, and certainly now for Internet companies.

This is a pat re-statement of a tired cliche:

"They all spawned brand new ecosystems that created entirely new opportunities for entrepreneurs to create wealth."

There will probably be economic growth in the future. I mentioned one obvious industry that is still forming: genetic engineering. That doesn't change the fact that the gold rush has come to an end for Internet startups.

Here you are changing the subject:

"The train even unified some nation states that didn't exist."

I come back to my original diagnosis: Your comment sounds like pure denial. You don't want to face a painful truth, so you create a rationalization.

[willholloway]

Pretty sure this is troll feeding but in case you're sincere:

I didn't say cost was lowered in the "train" industry. Cost was lowered in the milk industry. Because after the train people didn't have to keep cows in urban areas to have fresh milk.

Your diagnosis is wrong. I've spent the last year focused on internet connected hardware, immersing myself in all the amazingly powerful new tools that just got cheap and open source.

The things I've made, the possibilities, the wonder of designing something on a screen and having it manifest itself in the world, so you can hold it and it comes alive right in front of you. The next evolution of internet techology is going to be so much better than CRUD apps ever were.

Adopt a broader view of internet startups friend and you will see the internet is just the communication/coordination channel for our cybernetic future.

[tim333]

> the gold rush has come to an end for Internet startups

I can see the arguments for that but on the other hand the internet unicorns are popping up like never before. Maybe they are overhyped but Slack etc are doing ok. I'm not sure things are dramatically different in 2016 compared to 2013 when they launched for example.

[tim333]

So you don't think the age of AI is just beginning? It seems to be to me, at least from the point of view of making money. We've got walking robots and self driving cars in development but not selling significantly yet. That will change. I daresay it could just get dominated by Google but there are probably opportunities for startups.