alt Hacker NewsThe personal computing era happened partly because, while there were demands for computing, users' connectivity to the internet were poor or limited and so they couldn't just connect to the mainframe. We now have high speed internet access everywhere - I don't know what would drive the equivalent of the era of personal computing this time.
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Privacy. I absolutely will not ever open my personal files to an LLM over the web, and even with my mid-tier M4 Macbook I’m close to a point where I don’t have to. I wonder how much the cat is out of the back for private companies in this regard. I don’t believe the AI companies founded on stealing IP have stopped.
> I don't know what would drive the equivalent of the era of personal computing this time.
Space.
You don't want to wait 3-22 minutes for a ping from Mars.
Centralized only became mainstream when everything started to be offered "for free". When it was buy or pay recurrently more often the choice was to buy.
Privacy, reliable access when not connected to the web, the principal of decentralizing for some. Less supply chain risk for private enterprise.
> We now have high speed internet access everywhere
This is such a HN comment illustrating how little your average HN knows of the world beyond their tech bubble. Internet everywhere, you might have something of a point. But "high speed internet access everywhere" sounds like "I haven't travelled much in my life".
> We now have high speed internet access everywhere
As I travel a ton, I can confidently tell you, that this is still not true at all, and I’m kinda disappointed that the general rule of optimizing for bad reception died.