> For any of you working in tech at the time, was there a similar gap in perceptions around the Internet back in the days of the dot com bubble?
I wasn't drawing a paycheck from tech at the time, but I was a massive nerd, and from my recollection: Yes, absolutely. Dialup modems were slow, and you only had The Internet on a desktop computer. Websites were ugly (yes, the remaining 1.0 sites are charming, but that's mainly our nostalgia speaking), and frequently broke. It was or could be) expensive: you had to pay for a second phone (land!) line (or else deal with the hassle of coordinating phone calls), and probably an "internet package" from your phone company, or else pay by the minute to connect; and, of course, rural phone providers were slow to adopt any of those avenues of adoption. Commerce, pre-PayPal, was difficult - I remember ordering things online and then mailing a paper check to the address on the invoice!
Above all, we underestimate (especially in fora like this) how few people actually were online. I don't remember exact numbers at any particular times, but I remember being astonished a few times - the 'net was so ubiquitous in my and my friends' lives that "What do you mean, only X minority of people have ever used the internet?" For people who weren't interested in tech (the vast majority), seeing web addresses and "e[Whatever]" all over the place was mainly irritating.
Those elements and attitudes are certainly analogous to AI Hype today. Whether everything else along that path will turn out roughly the same remains to be seen. From my point of view, looking back, the most-hyped (or maybe just most-memorable) 1.0 failures were fantastic ideas that just arrived ahead of their time. For instance, Webvan = InstaCart; Pets.com = Chewy; Netbank = any virtual bank you care to name; Broadcast.com = any streaming video company you care to name; honorable mention: Beenz (though this might be controversial) was the closest we ever came to a viable micro-payments model.
The necessary infrastructure for (love it or hate it) a commercialized web was the smart-phone, and 'always on' portable connectivity. By analogy, the necessary infrastructure for widespread, democratized AI (whether for good or for ill) may not yet exist.
I wasn't drawing a paycheck from tech at the time, but I was a massive nerd, and from my recollection: Yes, absolutely. Dialup modems were slow, and you only had The Internet on a desktop computer. Websites were ugly (yes, the remaining 1.0 sites are charming, but that's mainly our nostalgia speaking), and frequently broke. It was or could be) expensive: you had to pay for a second phone (land!) line (or else deal with the hassle of coordinating phone calls), and probably an "internet package" from your phone company, or else pay by the minute to connect; and, of course, rural phone providers were slow to adopt any of those avenues of adoption. Commerce, pre-PayPal, was difficult - I remember ordering things online and then mailing a paper check to the address on the invoice!
Above all, we underestimate (especially in fora like this) how few people actually were online. I don't remember exact numbers at any particular times, but I remember being astonished a few times - the 'net was so ubiquitous in my and my friends' lives that "What do you mean, only X minority of people have ever used the internet?" For people who weren't interested in tech (the vast majority), seeing web addresses and "e[Whatever]" all over the place was mainly irritating.
Those elements and attitudes are certainly analogous to AI Hype today. Whether everything else along that path will turn out roughly the same remains to be seen. From my point of view, looking back, the most-hyped (or maybe just most-memorable) 1.0 failures were fantastic ideas that just arrived ahead of their time. For instance, Webvan = InstaCart; Pets.com = Chewy; Netbank = any virtual bank you care to name; Broadcast.com = any streaming video company you care to name; honorable mention: Beenz (though this might be controversial) was the closest we ever came to a viable micro-payments model.
The necessary infrastructure for (love it or hate it) a commercialized web was the smart-phone, and 'always on' portable connectivity. By analogy, the necessary infrastructure for widespread, democratized AI (whether for good or for ill) may not yet exist.