[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)