[syntheweave]

Almost nothing would be different at a glance. All the major trends that took place, with very little exception(VR, for example, still pushes hardware; and ML-based AI likewise), were already possible with mid-2000's hardware, just at lower fidelity, with less generous unit economics on the backend, and with less power efficiency on portable devices. This may have moved the attempts to run such services back by a few years, but I can't imagine that Twitter, for example, would be substantially different. I fully believe we would still end up with smartphones even if they had to run a much more stripped-down OS. You would still get attempts to make smart gadgets and freezer-fridge displays, because these gimmicks have been part of the economic backdrop ever since we started selling disposable razors and ballpoint pens.

More market pressure to reinvest in the inner software stack would have taken place, a move which actually would have commoditized out incumbent platform monopolies earlier(Microsoft et al.) - there would be less of a web focus and more of a systems/apps one.

There would still be an unhealthy adtech/surveillance sector, but it would consolidate under the thumb of high-capital players more readily. This would actually encourage more P2P-style solutions to appear in response. You would still have proof-of-work algorithms floating around searching for applications in this space; Bitcoin was always possible, the computing effort just reflects what proportion of physical capital is being deployed to secure transactions.

The obvious main downside would be with more extravagant uses of ML. Apps that depend on it as the core tech wouldn't pencil out. But some version of "algorithm-mediated" would still be possible.

[muzani]

Do we count internet speeds under hardware improvements? Fiber optics have been around for a long time, but I believe the higher modem speeds were only possible with hardware that supports their own specialized operating systems and such.