6 ms·

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphica

> In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary. > The first time was in 1980, when I was introduced to a graphical user interface > The second big surprise came just last year. I’d been meeting with the team from OpenAI I guess it's not surprising since Microsoft was late to the game with IE, but it's interesting he never mentions "the internet" in this list.

flyinglizard 4y ago
The internet evolved, it wasn't just useful all at once (as in "a demonstration that struck me"). Early users struggled every day to grow its utility and find more uses, all the way from a glorified BBS to what it is today.
- kenjackson 4y ago
  The first time someone demo'ed the web to me, my first thought was -- why would I use this when I have ftp, gopher, archie, etc... The web definitely didn't seem revolutionary to me. And for me my introduction to the internet was even more mundane -- it was just email and the ability to telnet so I could do my programming assignments.
  - basch 4y ago
    The web felt like both a simultaneous step forward and backward from HyperCard. I think the web would have evolved quite differently had their been a good PowerPoint like gui design tool for building sites, one that wasn’t focused on the backside.
- qorrect 4y ago
  And a lot of people here helped it to become what it is today. Cheers!
capableweb 4y ago
Maybe he doesn't mention it because he didn't think it was revolutionary when it first appeared. From https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/14/news/skeptics-cite-overload-of-useless-information-internet-arrives-at-a.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/14/news/skeptics-cite-overlo... (https://archive.is/r4F8T https://archive.is/r4F8T) > Even Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp. and widely regarded as the crown prince of the World Wide Web, was taken unawares by the Internet's grassroots acceptance. > In his book, "The Road Ahead" (not available on-line), Mr. Gates admitted that he believed the technology for "killer applications" was inadequate to lure consumers to the Internet. Of course, like any smart person at the time, he changed his views as the internet became more popular and eventually mainstream.
- adventured 4y ago
  Gates favored an approach he (and others) referred to as the information superhighway vs the post 1980s modern Internet. He regarded the Internet as a precursor to what he called the information superhighway in the book. It's not that he didn't see something equivalent to the Internet happening, he disagreed with exactly how it would look (who would own/control it is more likely what he had in mind given the context; I think he wanted a more closed off network that companies like Microsoft could thoroughly dominate). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Gates_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Gates_book)
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    He absolutely wanted a closed, proprietary network, and that’s also what he built: MSN. But it didn’t work, so they recycled the name into the MSN we know today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      Which of course got commingled with “Live”, MSN the dialup, “MSNBC”, and even active desktop (IIRC)… probably way more I’m forgetting too.
paxys 4y ago
The internet never had its "aha" moment like AI is now. Most people didn't know or care about it until decades into its existence.
- capableweb 4y ago
  AI has been around for as long (or even longer, depending on how you see it) as the internet (counting the start of internet as the beginning of TCP/IP).
  - xtracto 4y ago
    As someone who has done some research on AI in the last 25 years I find this current iteration amazing. 25 years ago when I was just starting my Bachelor's degree, AI was in a sort of "hiatus". The "great" AI procedures were mostly rule based systems. We read about MYCIN and similar expert systems and how they could do amazing stuff. We also read about AI generating new strategies for Backgammon. That was amazing. But during the 90s/2000s, nothing spectacular happened. We had some advances in neural networks, which were just an academic curiosity given their processing requirements. (I remember implementing a NN that could recognize vowels using C in school). We also had Genetic Algorithms, that were basically optimizers. We had some interesting implementations such as the Creatures game series and similar. Then "Machine Learning" started gaining notoriety. Industry started using "Machine Learning" techniques to perform some types of forecasting. This came a bit later after "Data warehousing". I remember all the talk about hypercubes and that crap. And how Walmart would extract "knowledge" and place beer six-packs in the diapers aisle so that "dad" would impulse-buy beer when "mom" makes him go to buy diapers. The ML time was an exciting time, and for some time mainstream thought that ML was AI ... but there were lots of other things cooking. Now suddenly we have enough power to make non-trivial Neural Networks... and suddenly we have Deep Learning and these LLM with HUGE networks. And industry has just started looking at it. These are exciting times. The other side of the coin is that during all these times, "mainstream" goal-post has been pushed and pushed for AI... what was AI in the 60s-70s (rule based systems like MyCIN), is not AI nowadays (they are just pattern matching, if-elses!! they say). What was AI in the 80s-90s (Genetic Algorithms, Multi-Agent systems) is not AI nowadays... and what was AI in the 2000-2010s (Random Forests, SVMs, AdaBoost) is no AI nowadays (just statistics!). But overall, it has been a very interesting subject to study.
discreteevent 4y ago
From the article: I’m lucky to have been involved with the PC revolution and the Internet revolution. I’m just as excited about this moment.
steve1977 4y ago
They were also late to the GUI game…
bilsbie 4y ago
Besides the hamster dance there was no one moment when the internet showed us its potential. Rather it was gradual.
- lostmsu 4y ago
  That's only because there was no Internet to spread through to everyone quickly.
jungturk 4y ago
> "Artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet." This is subtitle of the article, just above the byline, so I suspect he's talking about how impressive the demonstration was to him.
asdff 4y ago
Here I am thinking the gui abstracted too much away and future generations (mine included) are worse off for it
dolmen 4y ago
Last paragraph: > I’m lucky to have been involved with the PC revolution and the Internet revolution.
SergeAx 4y ago
> late to the game with IE What do you mean? In 2004 MSIE had 95% market share. It was toppled by Chrome only in 2012.

flyinglizard 4y ago

The internet evolved, it wasn't just useful all at once (as in "a demonstration that struck me"). Early users struggled every day to grow its utility and find more uses, all the way from a glorified BBS to what it is today.

kenjackson 4y ago
The first time someone demo'ed the web to me, my first thought was -- why would I use this when I have ftp, gopher, archie, etc... The web definitely didn't seem revolutionary to me. And for me my introduction to the internet was even more mundane -- it was just email and the ability to telnet so I could do my programming assignments.
- basch 4y ago
  The web felt like both a simultaneous step forward and backward from HyperCard. I think the web would have evolved quite differently had their been a good PowerPoint like gui design tool for building sites, one that wasn’t focused on the backside.
qorrect 4y ago
And a lot of people here helped it to become what it is today. Cheers!

capableweb 4y ago

Maybe he doesn't mention it because he didn't think it was revolutionary when it first appeared. From https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/14/news/skeptics-cite-overload-of-useless-information-internet-arrives-at-a.html https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/14/news/skeptics-cite-overlo... (https://archive.is/r4F8T https://archive.is/r4F8T) > Even Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp. and widely regarded as the crown prince of the World Wide Web, was taken unawares by the Internet's grassroots acceptance. > In his book, "The Road Ahead" (not available on-line), Mr. Gates admitted that he believed the technology for "killer applications" was inadequate to lure consumers to the Internet. Of course, like any smart person at the time, he changed his views as the internet became more popular and eventually mainstream.

adventured 4y ago
Gates favored an approach he (and others) referred to as the information superhighway vs the post 1980s modern Internet. He regarded the Internet as a precursor to what he called the information superhighway in the book. It's not that he didn't see something equivalent to the Internet happening, he disagreed with exactly how it would look (who would own/control it is more likely what he had in mind given the context; I think he wanted a more closed off network that companies like Microsoft could thoroughly dominate). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Gates_book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Gates_book)
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  He absolutely wanted a closed, proprietary network, and that’s also what he built: MSN. But it didn’t work, so they recycled the name into the MSN we know today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Which of course got commingled with “Live”, MSN the dialup, “MSNBC”, and even active desktop (IIRC)… probably way more I’m forgetting too.

paxys 4y ago

The internet never had its "aha" moment like AI is now. Most people didn't know or care about it until decades into its existence.

capableweb 4y ago
AI has been around for as long (or even longer, depending on how you see it) as the internet (counting the start of internet as the beginning of TCP/IP).
- xtracto 4y ago
  As someone who has done some research on AI in the last 25 years I find this current iteration amazing. 25 years ago when I was just starting my Bachelor's degree, AI was in a sort of "hiatus". The "great" AI procedures were mostly rule based systems. We read about MYCIN and similar expert systems and how they could do amazing stuff. We also read about AI generating new strategies for Backgammon. That was amazing. But during the 90s/2000s, nothing spectacular happened. We had some advances in neural networks, which were just an academic curiosity given their processing requirements. (I remember implementing a NN that could recognize vowels using C in school). We also had Genetic Algorithms, that were basically optimizers. We had some interesting implementations such as the Creatures game series and similar. Then "Machine Learning" started gaining notoriety. Industry started using "Machine Learning" techniques to perform some types of forecasting. This came a bit later after "Data warehousing". I remember all the talk about hypercubes and that crap. And how Walmart would extract "knowledge" and place beer six-packs in the diapers aisle so that "dad" would impulse-buy beer when "mom" makes him go to buy diapers. The ML time was an exciting time, and for some time mainstream thought that ML was AI ... but there were lots of other things cooking. Now suddenly we have enough power to make non-trivial Neural Networks... and suddenly we have Deep Learning and these LLM with HUGE networks. And industry has just started looking at it. These are exciting times. The other side of the coin is that during all these times, "mainstream" goal-post has been pushed and pushed for AI... what was AI in the 60s-70s (rule based systems like MyCIN), is not AI nowadays (they are just pattern matching, if-elses!! they say). What was AI in the 80s-90s (Genetic Algorithms, Multi-Agent systems) is not AI nowadays... and what was AI in the 2000-2010s (Random Forests, SVMs, AdaBoost) is no AI nowadays (just statistics!). But overall, it has been a very interesting subject to study.

discreteevent 4y ago

From the article: I’m lucky to have been involved with the PC revolution and the Internet revolution. I’m just as excited about this moment.

steve1977 4y ago

They were also late to the GUI game…

bilsbie 4y ago

Besides the hamster dance there was no one moment when the internet showed us its potential. Rather it was gradual.

lostmsu 4y ago
That's only because there was no Internet to spread through to everyone quickly.

jungturk 4y ago

> "Artificial intelligence is as revolutionary as mobile phones and the Internet." This is subtitle of the article, just above the byline, so I suspect he's talking about how impressive the demonstration was to him.

asdff 4y ago

Here I am thinking the gui abstracted too much away and future generations (mine included) are worse off for it

dolmen 4y ago

Last paragraph: > I’m lucky to have been involved with the PC revolution and the Internet revolution.

SergeAx 4y ago

> late to the game with IE What do you mean? In 2004 MSIE had 95% market share. It was toppled by Chrome only in 2012.