A big theme in the Last Day Good on the Internet is that predictions about advanced technology are a fool’s game. We rarely know when we are living through an acceleration of the future. And even when we are confronted with new tools like the internet, we instinctively speak the language of magic or mockery.
As I write in my book, the internet became a commercial force within a matter of weeks at the end of the summer of 1995. But even as it became mainstream, it was the source of bemusement, as TV anchors asked “what is internet?” and struggled to fill the resulting silence.
The single best televised collision between past and future is this interview between David Letterman and Bill Gates in 1995. I think the past wins this encounter (at about 3 minutes in!)
By 1998, the “internet was the future of business”, as this advert proclaimed. If you insert the letters “AI” you might be listening to almost every senior business executive alive today.