5 ms·

23 Year Old Mark Andreessen Explains the Web (29:55)

65 points by jkuria 15y ago

jkuria 15y ago
If you liked this you might like this Stanford ecorner presentation (this is what led me to the older one) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829998 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829998
jsrfded 15y ago
His name is spelled Marc Andreessen, please fix the title.
jparise 15y ago
I love that Marc presents using transparencies and an overhead projector. [Skip to the 30 min mark for his portion of the video.]
- noonat 15y ago
  Yeah, I did a bit of a double take when the first transparency was pulled. That moment, more than anything else in the video, made me realize how far things have come...
  - dspace 15y ago
    I was a freshman in college in 1996 and remember PowerPoints being used in my courses then, so that change is pretty old... and we're still using them today. The reality is that we haven't advanced very much in "presentation technology" in the last 15 years.
  - junkbit 15y ago
    Hard to believe that was the same year as Pulp Fiction. 1994 doesn't seem that long ago. Fascinating snapshot in time. I think we can forgive him some buzzwords as he is addressing a marketing audience.
bluekeybox 15y ago
Only commenting on the introduction part: Ken's remarks are actually a bit strange. It seems like "multimedia" was a big buzzword at the time. His introductory message seems to be almost "unless we get movies/trailers on the Internet ASAP, the Internet is going to fail." Today we all know that to be untrue. There are movies and other multimedia content on the Internet of course, but the primary driver behind its growth has been availability of relevant information and interactive retrieval. Think of Craigslist's success a few years back. It was a very non-multimedia site (unless you classify crappy pocket-cam pictures of your sofa as multimedia) but it provided relevant information, and therefore it succeeded. Also, Google text ads showed to everyone that advertising does not have to be multimedia-intensive -- it will succeed as long as it is relevant.
- gms 15y ago
  Multimedia was indeed a huge buzzword at the time, due to CD-ROM drives being commonplace.
crizCraig 15y ago
At 38:18 Mark discusses "skipping" the hard problems like search in order to get the simplest product out without inventing anything new. At 37:00 he notes Mosaic went from 12 to 3M users in a year and a half. Seems their strategy worked.
wangwei 15y ago
Great talk! On a completely different note, maybe different race perceives age differently. But Marc seriously look 43 to me instead of 23 in the video.
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Nope. I'm just as pasty and blond as he is, and that was my first thought as well. I would have put him at ~35, but he definitely doesn't look like he's fresh out of college.
  - Mizza 15y ago
    The first guy looks like the guy who gets killed in Die Hard: http://johnnyvengeance.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1ellis.jpg http://johnnyvengeance.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1ellis...
tambourine_man 15y ago
“09:08 A lot of people are talking about cyberspace, information superhighway and this idea that we are going to create this alternate environment that we are all gonna live on and that everything is going to be done there… that's crazy.”

65 points by jkuria 15y ago

If you liked this you might like this Stanford ecorner presentation (this is what led me to the older one) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829998 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2829998

jsrfded 15y ago

His name is spelled Marc Andreessen, please fix the title.

jparise 15y ago

I love that Marc presents using transparencies and an overhead projector. [Skip to the 30 min mark for his portion of the video.]

noonat 15y ago
Yeah, I did a bit of a double take when the first transparency was pulled. That moment, more than anything else in the video, made me realize how far things have come...
- dspace 15y ago
  I was a freshman in college in 1996 and remember PowerPoints being used in my courses then, so that change is pretty old... and we're still using them today. The reality is that we haven't advanced very much in "presentation technology" in the last 15 years.
- junkbit 15y ago
  Hard to believe that was the same year as Pulp Fiction. 1994 doesn't seem that long ago. Fascinating snapshot in time. I think we can forgive him some buzzwords as he is addressing a marketing audience.

bluekeybox 15y ago

Only commenting on the introduction part: Ken's remarks are actually a bit strange. It seems like "multimedia" was a big buzzword at the time. His introductory message seems to be almost "unless we get movies/trailers on the Internet ASAP, the Internet is going to fail." Today we all know that to be untrue. There are movies and other multimedia content on the Internet of course, but the primary driver behind its growth has been availability of relevant information and interactive retrieval. Think of Craigslist's success a few years back. It was a very non-multimedia site (unless you classify crappy pocket-cam pictures of your sofa as multimedia) but it provided relevant information, and therefore it succeeded. Also, Google text ads showed to everyone that advertising does not have to be multimedia-intensive -- it will succeed as long as it is relevant.

gms 15y ago
Multimedia was indeed a huge buzzword at the time, due to CD-ROM drives being commonplace.

crizCraig 15y ago

At 38:18 Mark discusses "skipping" the hard problems like search in order to get the simplest product out without inventing anything new. At 37:00 he notes Mosaic went from 12 to 3M users in a year and a half. Seems their strategy worked.

wangwei 15y ago

Great talk! On a completely different note, maybe different race perceives age differently. But Marc seriously look 43 to me instead of 23 in the video.

redthrowaway 15y ago
Nope. I'm just as pasty and blond as he is, and that was my first thought as well. I would have put him at ~35, but he definitely doesn't look like he's fresh out of college.
- Mizza 15y ago
  The first guy looks like the guy who gets killed in Die Hard: http://johnnyvengeance.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1ellis.jpg http://johnnyvengeance.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1ellis...

tambourine_man 15y ago

“09:08 A lot of people are talking about cyberspace, information superhighway and this idea that we are going to create this alternate environment that we are all gonna live on and that everything is going to be done there… that's crazy.”