[padelt]

I find it so painful to see people rediscovering the same problems again and again. Not that I blame anyone individually, yet it holds us all back.

Way back then, when your online connection was flaky, expensive and ~5-50kbps, the first online-only apps where greeted with "but.. but.. what if offline?"

Next thing I know: The iPhone mandates internet access and steam rolls everything into online-first/only mode for the average user. Business models based on that make sense, the industry follows. Privacy concerns are swept away. Control is taken away from the user to the service. Data governance/ownership is on its head. Synchronization is hard, marketing is easier. Decentralization is written off as anarchic geek fantasies. Interoperability does not fit business needs. Open protocols become data islands.

Are we actually about to come back to "but.. but.. what if offline?". I hope so. And how about reversing some of the problems we introduced earlier while we are at it? Privacy, decentralized services, interoperability.

[mindcrime]

If you really look at this history of computing (back at least to the 1970's or so), you see that very many things go in cycles like that. Certain concepts come into vogue, become the rage, lose steam, are replaced by something else, then come back, become the rage, lose steam... lather, rinse, repeat.

Why exactly this happens is an interesting question. I don't know the answer, but I have a vague suspicion that it happens where there is a fundamental, ultimately unresolvable conflict, and the "answers" just oscillate around the central issue.