The Butterfly Effect: Devices catalyze new tech epochs

Both hardware and software’s sensitivity to initial conditions trace all the way back to the genesis of each era’s killer device

From Stratechery’s “Gen AI Bridge to the Future”:

Ben Thompson:
Any recounting of computing history usually focuses on… the device [mainframes] and the input method [terminals] — because they tend to evolve in parallel… [M]ainframes still exist, and I’m typing this Article on a PC, even if you may consume it on a phone or via a wearable like a set of AirPods. What stands out to me, however, is… the application layer on one paradigm provides the bridge to the next one. This, more than anything, is why generative AI is a big deal in terms of realizing the future.

I understand Ben’s saying that software from the last epoch has often been a “bridge” improvisationally repurposed to brute force the next epoch, but the truism ‘every successive generation stands on the shoulders of it predecessors’ is a penetrating glimpse of the obvious — albeit, perhaps, a worthwhile reminder a la the infamous “you didn’t build that” stump speech from Barack Obama on the campaign trail in 2012.