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I disagree - I would agree that Minecraft wasn't a novel technology, just like Linux wasn't a novel technology - it was an alternative version of Minix.

Additionally Zoom isn't a novel technology, it isn't even particularly interesting technically when compared to other video conferencing solutions - but over the past year it's been incredibly important to a number of people.

I think the OC slightly missed the mark in mentioning "important technologies" instead of something closer to "technologically innovative" technologies or, more accurately (but less interesting of a statement) "expensive to develop technologies". Things that are expensive to develop generally aren't cheap to begin with, while things that are cheap to develop need to be cheap to compete with other market entrants and clones. Additionally hardware (a limiting factor on cost for a lot of technology) tends to get cheaper over time and that rate of change is accelerated by a large market of interest (leading to more folks deciding to try and iterate new designs).



> just like Linux wasn't a novel technology - it was an alternative version of Minix

No, Linux differed from Minix in utterly fundamental ways outlined in the correspondence between Linus Torvalds and Andrew Tenenbaum.




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