[HN Gopher] The Digital Wallet of the Future (1996)
___________________________________________________________________
The Digital Wallet of the Future (1996)
Author : Lammy
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-05-31 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (buffalonews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (buffalonews.com)
| smoldesu wrote:
| >If you lose your wallet PC, replacing the actual device may cost
| about what it does to replace a good camera -- several hundred
| dollars, at least -- so you won't want to lose yours.
|
| >On the other hand, replacing almost anything "in" the wallet,
| from money to photos, will be simple and inexpensive because the
| wallet will contain only digital information that can be traced,
| replicated or retrieved from another location.
|
| Love him or hate him, Gates had pretty damn good future sight
| back in the 90s. It turned out not to be a panacea (see recent
| events), but his focus on feeding a corporate world with money to
| burn made him a rich man very quickly.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| It's fascinating to go back and read predictive stuff like this.
| He got so much right (digital wallet, replaceable, a small screen
| in your pocket), yet missed the big picture that made it reality:
| It's not a Wallet PC, it's a PC in your pocket that happens to
| include a wallet as just one piece of available software.
|
| There's an alternate reality where he figured that out sooner and
| beat Apple and Google to the punch.
| simonh wrote:
| I'm reading Stephen Sinofsky's new book as he writes it, he's
| blogging the chapters, and it up to just a few years earlier,
| about 1993.
|
| These are the operating systems they were developing at that
| time. DOS, OS/2, Windows, Windows NT and Cairo. Each was a
| different code base, different strategic vision and different
| technical requirements. That's unbelievably stupid. They soon
| ditched OS/2, DOS and the failed Cairo project, but then added
| Windows CE.
|
| They never valued and core technology. Each product or market
| segment was addressed separately, from scratch by a new product
| team. The compiler team barely talked to the tools team, who
| developed separate tech from the applications teams who used
| their own frameworks different from those provided by the OS
| team. Most of the narrative is about teams talking past each
| other in meetings and struggling to get them to work together.
| It's nuts.
| detaro wrote:
| > _it 's a PC in your pocket that happens to include a wallet
| as just one piece of available software._
|
| I mean, that's what he's describing and what PocketPCs were?
| That's not what the current crop of smartphones beat Microsoft
| at.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| You might want to read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite
| d_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
| [deleted]
| nixarian wrote:
| Keys last...how long? Electronics last...how long? Keys require
| how much power? Electronics..? These people are out of touch with
| reality.
| IncRnd wrote:
| The opinion piece by Gates was meant to describe a device that
| could help sell more Windows software. None of the "industry
| forecasting" really applied. He didn't care how much power the
| device would use or how long the battery would last. He wanted
| to sell more software.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
|
| > We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a
| country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including
| the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation
| (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For
| any issues, call (800) 777-8640.
| ______- wrote:
| https://archive.is/4c3NW
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| I suppose it wasn't obvious in 1996, even to someone like Bill
| Gates, that mobile telecommunications and the "pocket PC" would
| become intertwined and the former would drive the adoption of the
| later.
| jmvidal wrote:
| The Apple Newton was shipping in 1993
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
| simonh wrote:
| Indeed, and General Magic was working on similar concepts.
| Psion was doing well. The first Palm PDA came out the same
| year, 1996. The DynaBook concept had been around for decades.
| It's all about execution.
| agumonkey wrote:
| and waves
|
| remember electric vehicles predates ICE ones
| jancsika wrote:
| Is there anyone out there discussing things like Ecash in the
| cryptocurrency space, or has blockchain essentially eaten all
| those brains in the short term?
|
| Just seems like Ecash got so much right in terms of the
| properties one would want for digital cash...
| gruez wrote:
| Because people who are into cryptocurrencies are in it for the
| "not fiat" aspect, not the "electronic transactions" aspect. If
| you care about the latter, credit cards and/or mobile wallets
| adequately covers 90% of the use cases.
| swiley wrote:
| I don't know how you expect to come to reasonable conclusions
| when you generalize that extremely.
| kerng wrote:
| I think the idea of Bitcoin enthusiasts is much more
| foundational, than just having "digital cash".
|
| I have been reading a book called "The Bitcoin Standard" which
| highlights that the goal is a switch for society towards
| Austrian economics and getting back to something like the gold
| standard (Hint: Bitcoin is the better gold).
|
| The book is quite good and I learned a lot about the history of
| money - so I'd recommend it.
|
| To paraphrase, the current cash printing is vaporware and not
| backed by anything anymore - making it quite weak and easy to
| attack - disaster waiting to happen. Central planning of
| currency should be replaced by a democratic and capitalist
| system where the best currency evolves naturally. Which might
| or might not possibly happen with Bitcoin.
|
| Something like a government bailout using tax payer money of a
| "too big to fail" organization would not happen in such a world
| - making the economic system a lot stronger for the
| individuals.
| [deleted]
| harwoodleon wrote:
| Bitcoin is not digital gold. Bitcoin is an extremely
| expensive and uncensorable method of value transfer.
|
| Nano is more like digital gold as it can be passed from hand
| to hand with no fee, but like Bitcoin has a fixed
| deflationary supply.
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| I think you got "gold" and "currency" mixed up. Gold is not
| supposed to be cheap/free to exchange. It is a property of
| a currency.
| rictic wrote:
| China's digital Yuan has some similar properties to Ecash. You
| have horizontal privacy (you can spend your money without your
| partners knowing how much you have or what you do with it), but
| not vertical privacy (the government gets to know
| _everything_).
|
| They're even working on extending it to support offline
| transactions.
|
| This is a scary thing to put into any government's hands, let
| alone the Chinese government's, but it has enough attractive
| properties that it has a good chance of catching on.
| pkt1975 wrote:
| Blocked from the UK due to legal reasons.
| abss wrote:
| Not available in Europe.. Do you have other link?
| madars wrote:
| https://archive.is/4c3NW
| Lammy wrote:
| A substantially similar version is quoted in full on this
| Windows CE history page:
| https://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/walletpc/
| newbie578 wrote:
| I still believe that the anti-trust case against Microsoft
| completely changed the course of history.
|
| Microsoft was left a shell of its former self, a wolf without
| fangs, tired and exhausted from a battle of attrition, with the
| biggest casualty being Gates himself who lost the inner drive to
| lead such a huge company.
|
| I do hope he plans to write a detailed biography one day, so that
| we can see what his thought process back then was.
|
| Apple wouldn't even exist honestly today if the anti-trust case
| wasn't launched against Microsoft.
|
| That is the very reason I cannot wait for Apple to get launched
| with its own anti-trust, who knows what company will come to take
| it's mantle.
| the-dude wrote:
| That is an interesting take. A take I have never heard of
| before. A take I definitely do not agree with.
|
| But it is an interesting take.
| jbb_hn wrote:
| And the original article has exactly ZERO comments.
|
| A lot of his concepts were right, but the implementation isn't as
| aggregated as predicted.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-31 23:00 UTC)