Think of the Game hits from the 90's. A room full of people made games which shaped a generation. Maybe it was orders of magnitude harder then, but today, it's multiple orders of magnitude more people required to make them.
Same is true for websites. Sure, the websites were dingy with poor UX and oodles of bugs... but the size of the team required to make them was absolutely tiny compared to today.
Things are simultaneously the best they've ever been, and the worst they've ever been, it's a weird situation to be in for sure.
But truthfully; orders of magnitude more powerful hardware was the real unlock.
Why is slack and discord popular? Because it's possible to use multiple gigabytes of ram for a chat client.
25 years ago? Multiple gigabytes of ram put your machine firmly in the "I have unlimited money and am probably a server doing millions of things" class.
Think of the Game hits from the 90's. A room full of people made games which shaped a generation. Maybe it was orders of magnitude harder then, but today, it's multiple orders of magnitude more people required to make them.
Same is true for websites. Sure, the websites were dingy with poor UX and oodles of bugs... but the size of the team required to make them was absolutely tiny compared to today.
Things are simultaneously the best they've ever been, and the worst they've ever been, it's a weird situation to be in for sure.
But truthfully; orders of magnitude more powerful hardware was the real unlock.
Why is slack and discord popular? Because it's possible to use multiple gigabytes of ram for a chat client.
25 years ago? Multiple gigabytes of ram put your machine firmly in the "I have unlimited money and am probably a server doing millions of things" class.