thewildsilence t1_iy2lk1m wrote on November 28, 2022 at 7:03 AM

For me personally, 2012 wasn't that different to now. I had a laptop, a smartphone, spent a lot of time on social media. 2002 on the other hand was a completely different world. We didn't have internet at home at that point.

CypherLH t1_iy2p00g wrote on November 28, 2022 at 7:49 AM

Yep, I'm a Gen X so been closely following tech since the late 80's. 2002 to 2012 was a really big leap. I was already working in IT in 2002 and I remember being in awe of a _1 gig_ micro-HD drive. Like the idea of fitting a gigabyte into my pocket was mind blowing. Big bulky massive CRT was still dominant, flat screens didn't really start going mainstream until 2004-ish. TIVO was a massive deal, the ability to pause and time shift television was mind boggling. DVD's were a huge deal...I eventually accumulated over 300 DVD's in my collection...I literally threw the entire collection into a dumpster last year because DVD's are literally just garbage now unless you have some crazy mint edition or something. You could download video but _streaming_ video was still pretty rare and always in crappy resolution. Youtube was still 5 years in the future at that point. Cell phones were still basically just little mobile phones...texting was a thing but universally sucked at the time. Mundane things like Netflix and a 2022 smart phone would have seemed like pure science fiction in 2002.

By comparison the leap from 2012 to 2022 seems smaller...but that could just be an artifact of "recentcy bias". When we look back from 2032 the 2012 to 2022 jump might feel larger.

visarga t1_iy2w2kd wrote on November 28, 2022 at 9:33 AM

> By comparison the leap from 2012 to 2022 seems smaller...

True, but this is also the golden period of AI. I think 90% of all AI research was done in the last 10 years.

CypherLH t1_iy5w7fy wrote on November 28, 2022 at 11:52 PM

Maybe. It seems like more of a period of incremental changes. I can only think of a few fundamentally NEW things to emerge in the 2012-2022 period that would stand out to most people from 2012....

-- VR going semi-mainstream and becoming a real thing even if still fairly niche

-- collapse in prices of very large flat screen TV's (even large OLED's are usually under $3000 now)

-- the Deep Learning neural net AI explosion (though practical applications have only really begun to emerge at the very end of that 2012-2022 period)

-- EV cars becoming practical

-- sudden emergence of mRNA tech spurred on by the COVID pandemic

-- wearable tech going mainstream (smart watches, fitness trackers, etc)

Those are each pretty significant but it still feels like 2002 - 2012 saw more fundamental changes.