> These statements were true of the Internet too. Until it wasn't. It'll be a slow burn and then one day you turn around and notice it's everywhere.
Maybe. What I remember is that the niche parts of the Internet remained niche. Everybody seemed excited about email, kids were excited about instant messaging, etc, and fundamentally that never changed; people have continued to use the Internet for communication. And the dotcom boom was a massive, stupid frenzy fueled by investors who had no idea what they were doing or what they were buying, and just wanted to make sure they didn't miss the next Microsoft, but the bubble was grounded in the accurate prediction that the web would become an essential part of business and an enormous money maker.
Does all of this sound right? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I find myself in the unexpected, uncomfortable position of wildly contradicting and undermining what I thought I understood: that people are terrible at predicting the future of technology.
Broadly speaking, in the 80s and 90s, the outlines of the future of technology was obvious and unmistakable: computers would become faster and more connected; that they'd take over or supplement a widening range of tasks and parts of our lives.
But it also can be hard to remember the way you understood the world in the past, or the way things were, because your understanding of the present overwrites it. Remember when VR was going to be huge? Remember when 3d chat was going to be the next big thing? Remember when TV was going to be hugely important in the classroom? Remember when social media was going to make our lives better?
People are making predictions regarding AI (or "AI") -- that it will do Everything Everywhere Very Soon, that it will lead to a 10x increase in worker output -- that strike me as absolutely, obviously wrong, even risible.
> I find myself in the unexpected, uncomfortable position of wildly contradicting and undermining what I thought I understood: that people are terrible at predicting the future of technology.
By and large, I think you're still right. But by the late '90s and early 2000s, the internet wasn't "the future of technology". It was already the present of technology.
Anyone paying attention could already see by 1994 or 1995 that the Internet was a) a big deal, and b) growing massively. The key at that point was not figuring out that the technology was going to be huge; it was figuring out which companies using that technology would be huge—ie, predicting with more granularity the future of the technology that was the World Wide Web.
And investors failed at that. Hard. That's what caused the dot-com bust.
Maybe. What I remember is that the niche parts of the Internet remained niche. Everybody seemed excited about email, kids were excited about instant messaging, etc, and fundamentally that never changed; people have continued to use the Internet for communication. And the dotcom boom was a massive, stupid frenzy fueled by investors who had no idea what they were doing or what they were buying, and just wanted to make sure they didn't miss the next Microsoft, but the bubble was grounded in the accurate prediction that the web would become an essential part of business and an enormous money maker.
Does all of this sound right? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I find myself in the unexpected, uncomfortable position of wildly contradicting and undermining what I thought I understood: that people are terrible at predicting the future of technology.
Broadly speaking, in the 80s and 90s, the outlines of the future of technology was obvious and unmistakable: computers would become faster and more connected; that they'd take over or supplement a widening range of tasks and parts of our lives.
But it also can be hard to remember the way you understood the world in the past, or the way things were, because your understanding of the present overwrites it. Remember when VR was going to be huge? Remember when 3d chat was going to be the next big thing? Remember when TV was going to be hugely important in the classroom? Remember when social media was going to make our lives better?
People are making predictions regarding AI (or "AI") -- that it will do Everything Everywhere Very Soon, that it will lead to a 10x increase in worker output -- that strike me as absolutely, obviously wrong, even risible.