How will growth affect the community?
I wasn't able to afford the Internet in the early 90s, since I didn't have a job, so I can't speak to what the Internet was like in its early days. Back then, when you connected it tied up your phone line. A dedicated phone line was expensive, so the only way to connect was to call using the line the rest of the house used for its calls. Since cell phones were also too expensive, nobody else could contact the outside world while you were using the Internet, limiting its usefulness regardless of how much information was available.
I started using the Internet regularly in the late 90s, and I remember it (in terms of Internet technology) as a better time than now, in many ways. The reason is that, back then, it was possible to produce different sorts of content for a different audience. Everyone who used the Internet understood how to use it; they knew how to connect and disconnect, how to install browsers and surf webpages, how to post in forums, how to keep computers somewhat secure, and even if they didn't enjoy things like video games, they appreciated them and knew how to play them.
In the late 90s, you could produce content and, if it was good, people would use it. Even as late as 2005, there was room for a blog that had interesting things to say that could make it big. In that time, you could even edit wikipedia articles without fear of deletionism.
But then, things changed. Even though many of the same people are undoubtedly still using the Internet, it is a different place. Content has become watered down to the lowest common denominator, so that rather than 10 videos of quality 1 being produced, there are now 100 videos of quality 0.5. Rather than adding features to software, people have eliminated steps forward like the Windows Aero interface and the Start menu. Instead of 3D blu-ray movies with high resolution and Master Audio, Netflix is the competitor to beat with 2Mbps 720p streams and compressed audio. Now, any site which assumes a level of technical expertise is looked at as poorly designed.
Right now, many people look at bitcoins as requiring some technical expertise to use. Even in /r/bitcoin, you can generally assume that people are familiar with the system and have a discussion with them. In two years, will that be possible anymore? Or, will there be 100 times as many people, with the average level of discourse 10 times less than it is today? When you mention bitcoins to someone then, will you have to ask if they know what a "miner" is?
I wonder whether these are like the glory days of the Internet, before it was diluted down. Will bitcoins follow the same course and leave us rich but missing the times when we hacked around with bitcoin stuff and discussed low-level things back when the protocol was still the focus?
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- Days until July 24: 12