(Ignite) HISTORY IS A WHEEL. TECH IS A SPIRAL, ERAN ZIMBLER, Alibaba Cloud
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Presenting the concept of spiral history in computer technology, with very little examples. spiral history is a metaphor for how we do the same stuff every few years but they work out a little bit different. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” or so it is said, in technology and even more specifically in computer science it still holds true, however in computer science it is not exactly repeating and sometimes in our very young field forgetting the past actually helps since what haven’t worked before might work today. 5 minutes for 2 examples of spiral history and i hope you will accept this theory.
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(Ignite) HISTORY IS A WHEEL. TECH IS A SPIRAL, ERAN ZIMBLER, Alibaba Cloud
- 1. HISTORY IS A WHEEL TECH IS A SPIRAL
- 2. DISCLAIMER
- 4. SPIRAL
- 5. WHERE COMPUTER TECH STARTED
- 7. THERE IS NO CLOUD
- 11. CAN THIS IDEA HELP IN ANY WAY
- 12. THANK YOU
Editor's Notes
- Hi, My name is eran zimbler and I work in alibaba israel, which is part of the greater alibaba and not related directly to aliexpress.
- But first a disclaimer, this is not a theory as theor requires research, and peer validation and many other requirements that as a non academic I simply did not do. Its more of an observation that make it easier to see how change affects our day to day technlogy changes.
- §We all know of the circle concept, we use it in presenting the development cycle, we use it for economics, for system design, for human efforts, for many many things, the thing about a circle is that it got no start and no end and it is easy to see it as a closed system. Without past or present. Always moving The idea is that assuming one step leads to the other and eventually you will return to the same place. A good example would be how roman empire citizens had barbarians attacking them from over the next hill, the legions will come and conquer the hill and the next city now the new citizens are being attacked by barbarians from the over the next hill so the legions come again.
- A spiral unlike a circle has a defined start and no end, or if it is going toward the center a very clear end. and while you can return to do similar things it is not the exact same. It is not a new concept, spirals are being used for similar ideas to the circle in order to show that the system is in fact changing with each iteration. However to the main subject at hand
- So lets focus on a tiny tiny of niche of technology computing specifically the more public and visible element of it. Computing started in the 60’s with big bulky machines that were for computation only, internet started in 1974 and in 1990 first web server and web browser (notice the speed increase) After that things really started moving, with lots of money and lots of opportunities began.
- The main trigger Eventloops as a design pattern are old, and were used widely. If you learned programming in the 90 as a child you had simple games where you checked if something happened and than updated the screen. However this interesting missing article from around 1990 talked about how event loops and giving the cpu something to do while the disk or network is working is not useable at the moment, since the network and disks were on par with most cpus, so there was no point in letting the cpu do something else. And it was finished with an interesting idea that with moore law and the advancement in technology it might be better to do so in the future. Need rework
- So lets look at a few examples: 1. Starting with terminals connected to big machines, than terminals remotely connected to big mainframes, than we moved to stronger and stronger end stations. Better servers and than multiple managed servers and than around 2006 AWS started growing and today we have cloud. Which is just like the mainframe of old but a step removed. Lots of power in somebody elses location.
- 2. Vscode.dev is exactly like the other example only for ide. It is one step more advanced than using a terminal to edit using vim on a remote server.
- 3. gitlab/github. The older generation of source control systems were based on a central repository. Git is not (as well as some others) however eventually after a very short while we are now using centerlised systems again.
- Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, this is a parapharesing of an eralier statement saying “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.” and everyone tends to agree to this very broad statement. In the next few minutes I will cover my own idea about technology cycle. Fix to show this is also a spiral (paraphrasing)
- This is probably won’t help you in any way get ready for the future, or predict it. Technlogy is changing all the time, some might say evolving. It would help in finding the parallels to old concepts to better understand where we are now. It helps me personally get quick feel of a new technology before I start using it. However if you take only one thing from it go read the old articles it is usually easier to understand than overly complex distributed systems.
- Thank you for listening to my rambling it has been great fun. I also want to thank the orgnizers for letting me give another such random talk.