Discussion
Seeing people pondering what time they'd want to travel back in time to... What springs to my mind is: Could I nudge the computing industry towards a better present with the gift of foreknowledge?
To an extent I don't think I would be able to nudge things too much, since my read of computing history is that we needed to go down the path we did simply to have the tools we needed to build our present.
That said...
1/2?
Maybe "The Cloud" wouldn't be so hyped if the internet quadrupled the bitwidth of IP addresses earlier? To be clear making that change at any time that would've mattered would qualify as over-engineering.
Or maybe inventing CRDTs decades ahead of time would've had a similar effect?
Or what if we published more international & accessible Free/Libre Software text-rendering tools in the late 1980s, to help the movement of the time better compete against the coming proprietary office suites?
2/3!
Honestly though: Who knows? We can only guess at what might have been.
And none of this would really have dent against my true gripe: Capitalism!
But it may have led to a better FOSS folklore, embedding inclusivity values early on...
2.5/2.5 Fin for today!
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