The Inventions: The Internet
Earlier this week I began sharing with you the inventions I’ve been hinting at the past couple of weeks. We’ve already covered the Printing Press, the Steam Engine, the Telegraph, and the Microprocessor. Today - the Internet.
Quotes from the forthcoming book The Power of Mobility. Due out this September.
“1995 was the year the Internet burst into the consciousness of the general public. Most dramatically, Netscape’s unbelievably rich initial public offering (IPO) of stock on August 9 captured everyone’s attention and launched a thousand startups. However, other companies that would have a much more permanent impact on the Internet, the economy, and how we individually interact with the world were already on their way and celebrated significant milestones during the year. In March, Yahoo was incorporated, graduating from a hobby to a business. Amazon’s online store opened in July. The first auction on eBay was launched on Labor Day. So, in a short six months, three of the companies that have come to define the Internet experience came into being.”
“Over the coming years, the incredible power of networked computing to deliver to us dynamic content, enable us to buy and sell in new ways, and connect us more directly to our extended communities fundamentally changed how we live, how we interact with the world, and how we run our businesses.”
…
“Bob [Metcalfe] didn’t see growing traffic as a curse, but rather a blessing. Bob observed that the value of any network increases exponentially with the number of participants in the network, and this simple, but true observation has borne his name ever since.”
“What happened in 1995 is that the Internet reached a tipping point in the number of users. The value of the network outweighed the cost of connecting, so more people and businesses joined, further increasing the value. By the end of 1995, you couldn’t afford to NOT be connected to the Internet, especially if you were a business.”