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- cross-posted to:
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An interesting article, but something ahead of its time will continue to be ahead of its time no matter how many years pass
Someone could have changed their mind on whether or not something was ahead of it’s time.
40 years later, and I still haven’t changed my mind that Nintendo’s Famicom…
There, I fixed the title.
That’s fair!
I guess there’d be times when the opinion changes. Like maybe the original iPhone seemed ahead of its time, but nowadays it’s recognized that it wasn’t the first for any of its features, just the right combination at the right time.
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You haven’t understood. OP is saying that something being ahead of its time isn’t a function of how much time has passed since. It will always remain ahead of its time. As stated, it is an intrinsic, rather than an extrinsic, property.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_properties
I agree, and especially in this case, but I can think of corner cases where “its time” gets fuzzier as time passes and expands to include more competition.
For example, the Compaq Presario 2100 seems to have been about the first PC with a price under USD$1000 - I remember that being a big deal at the time! … for a few months. Now it’s just a footnote that took me some Google-fu to find at all, but it was ahead of its time at the time and was a cover story on magazines.
Something being ahead of its time is ahead compared to its contemporaries. 100 years later its contemporaries are still the same because being contemporary of something means “being of the same period”, therefore no matter how much time passes, it will still be ahead of its time.
Something can be ahead of its time, but that doesn’t mean it is unsurpassable.
I wasn’t saying it was unsurpassable. I was saying that “its time” was a fixed point in history, and if it was ahead of its time (aka. 1983), it will always be ahead of its time (1983).
The Famicom is definitely not ahead of the Switch, or even the N64. I’m sure someone could argue it was ahead of the SNES in some ways. Or anything else. But as a whole, it’s been surpassed a long time ago.
