Comment by c22
3 hours ago
Don't think of it as a step back, it's just a point in a familiar cycle:
New application of computing requires a lot of compute -> compute centralizes -> compute improves, smaller, faster, cheaper -> compute decentralizes -> new application of compute is found -> (return to beginning of cycle)
Can you think of examples of this cycle? I know this is roughly what happened with mainframes, but I struggle to think of other times it went like that.
Maybe arcade games?
The first one was code breaking. The most recent was "cloud". If you look you will probably find others.