meta ruminations on the next big thing

[Dave Long]

> What happened from '65 to '70?

Component based computing.

Doug McIlroy's typewritten thoughts
on 11 Oct 1964 are available a link
away from:
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/mdmpipe.html>
| We should have some ways of coupling programs like
| garden hose--screw in another segment when it becomes when
| when it becomes necessary to massage data in another way.
| This is the way of IO also.

This may be too late for the time
frame, though, as he had to wait
until '72 or so for the epiphany:
>From <http://www.princeton.edu/~mike/expotape.htm>
| [Thompson] put pipes into Unix, he put this notation [...
| pointed to the board, where he had written f >g> c] into
| shell, all in one night. The next morning, we had this --
| people came in, and we had -- oh, and he also changed a lot
| of -- most of the programs up to that time couldn't take
| standard input, because there wasn't the real need. So
| they all had file arguments; grep had a file argument,
| and cat had a file argument, and Thompson saw that that
| wasn't going to fit with this scheme of things and he went
| in and changed all those programs in the same night. I
| don't know how ... And the next morning we had this orgy
| of one-liners.

(apologies for recycling
kragen-discuss bits)

> If so, how does one figure out ahead of time what
> it will be and what parts will be needed to make
> it happen so you can be ready (read:  be the
> next Oracle).

The trouble with following the
money is that every other smart
person is doing the same thing.
Big wins, on the other hand,
occur when something that the
experts think trivial becomes
very valuable.

Oracle is a fine example; from
what I've heard, in its salad
days it would crash more often
than a Windows box.  Who would
have thought one could make $$
with an inconsistent & fragile
database system?  Not IBM, but
saving data was not the issue,
saving money was. [0]

Following the money is betting
the favorite, and in the stock
market parimutuel that doesn't
pay off like the long odds on
the dark horse do. [1]

-Dave

[0] In many systems, the human
is the cheapest fault-tolerant
component.

[1] At some point, I'd like to
compare the success rate of VC
firms with that of race studs.
Both seem to be based on a few
large successes making up for
a majority of complete losses.

Here's a game: roll a die, and
payoff for 6 is 10x; all other
numbers lose.

What fraction of your capital
would you bet?  (what happens
when 250 people play the game
for 20 rounds?)

::::::::::::::

> 1980-1985 had businesses adopting PCs like mad, ...
> 1995-2000 has businesses jumping on the web, ...

Fits with my experience; our
funding in 1994 was from folk
who made theirs at A-T in the 
early 80's.  Is the plural of
anecdote spelled "data"?