Thread by @swardley

X : How long does it take to go from genesis of something to the point of it becoming a commodity?
Me : Typically about 30 - 50 years, though there is some tentative evidence (very questionable) that it might be slightly faster (20 - 30 years) now. Stick with 30 to 50 years.

X : That's incredibly slow?
Me : No, that's incredibly fast and it has some fairly devastating consequences. Remember we often have overlapping points of industrialisation (conversion to commodity) for multiple different types of tech.

X : Devastating? How?
Me : Ok, let us take 30-50 years as the average time for genesis to the point of industrialisation i.e. commodity [see point A] plus the average 10-15 years to become the new "norm" for the majority [point B]

... don't forget this is the majority, the laggards can take much longer. Now in the past, it wasn't so bad because the time frames were much larger (i.e. nuts and bolts took 2,000 years not 30-50 years) ...

... however in today's climate, we could end up with laggards finally accepting "cloud" [A] as the norm just when the majority already see "serverless" as the new norm [B] and the winners and losers of "conversational programming" are being decided [C] ...

... to give an analogy, it is like the laggards finally accepting "swords over clubs", just as the majority are accepting "muskets" and the winners / losers are being decided in general purpose machines guns ... 30 - 50 years is devastatingly fast.

... in the past, there was time to adapt, many hundreds of years. Now, the speed means that with each overlapping wave of industrialisation that the technological delta between companies is rapidly growing ... some companies are falling further and further behind.

X : Where are we today?
Me : Roughly? Laggards are finally accepting the internet as a new norm [A], majority have accepted cloud as a new norm [B], winners and losers of serverless are being decided [C] and conversational programming is approaching industrialisation [D]