Glyph Lefkowitz: The Next Thing Will Not Be Big

The dawn of a new year is an opportunity to reflect on the past year and consider what the new year may bring. The 20th century was marked by rapid technological change, and the 21st century has continued this trend, with innovations emerging at an increasingly fast pace. The early 20th century saw significant disruptions from electrification, radio, motion pictures, and television, while the latter half of the century was shaped by the microprocessor, personal computers, and the internet. These innovations have had a profound impact on society, but they have also created a culture of constant acceleration, where people expect new and exciting technologies to emerge regularly. The concept of the "Next Big Thing" has become a driving force in the tech industry, with venture capital firms investing heavily in startups in the hopes of finding the next big winner. However, the industry is now maturing, and the pace of innovation is slowing down, with many of the recent developments being incremental rather than revolutionary. The search for the Next Big Thing has become a fool's errand, with many people assuming that AI will be the next major innovation, but the reality is that the industry is facing diminishing returns and saturated markets. The open-source software community is also feeling the effects of this trend, with many projects now focused on hyper-scale application development rather than benefiting individuals and small companies. As a result, it is essential to be aware of this trend and to focus on fighting scale creep, by developing projects that are relevant to a broader range of users, rather than just massive cloud companies.