A bubble doesn’t mean a technology is useless. It just means it’s overvalued

In the last 30 years, we’ve had multiple bubbles in the tech industry. Every one of them was backed by real stuff that we still use today. They were still bubbles and a ton of people were hurt when they popped.

▲ api 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I know. I'm saying that overall I don't believe it's that overvalued.

Specific things may be overvalued. I suspect data center real estate is a bubble, for instance.

▲ inigyou 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The railway bubble and the optical fiber bubble left the world with lots of railways and optical fibers. Once their original owners went bankrupt, the assets themselves were quite useful and changed the world.

The cryptocurrency bubble, however, didn't. Not really. At best you can use it to buy drugs. Some of the GPUs may have been repurposed for AI, but not enough to make a dent in AI, and the AI reesarchers who kicked off the AI bubble were having to buy their GPUs for high prices to compete with the miners, not low prices after they went bust, so we can't even say miners helped kick it off.

▲ watwut 3 days ago | parent [-]

Many of those assets were useless - like railways from nowhere to nowhere. Only some ended up being used.

And many innocent people ended up being hurt in the process.

Bubbles are not good. They are harmful. The ability yo recoup some of the losses in the span of next 15 years does not make the bubbles something positive.

▲ andrekandre 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

  > Bubbles are not good. They are harmful.

bubbles are bad for society too; families get thrown out on the street, big players/individuals buy all the cheap/discounted assets furthering economy divisions, and depending on the size civil unrest etc....

▲ inigyou 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Even railways from nowhere to nowhere often ended up being useful when the ends were extended to somewhere or when somewhere grew to encompass nowhere.

For example the Berlin Ringbahn was once some billionaire's toy but now it serves very useful traffic, as Berlin grew outwards to where the Ringbahn is.

	▲	watwut 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It is not "often" it is "sometimes" and it is also less than a participation trophy. It does not make the bubble not harmful or even less harmful. It just means that sometimes you can repurpose an expensively build junk.