[rajman187]

> It was clearly valuable from day 1

I’m not sure that’s the case even if in retrospect we can clearly argue this

In 1998, Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences, infamously predicted that “the growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s” [1] and even though that turned out to be spectacularly wrong it shows the attitude in the early days wasn’t one of absolute certainty.

And certainly the current AI boom is most visibly known for LLMs but there is a lot more happening beyond chatbots.

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-krugman-internets-eff...

[0xDEAFBEAD]

He was correct about Metcalfe's law though. He correctly refuted a bad argument, but making a bad argument for a position doesn't make it false.

[wat10000]

Krugman was very much in the minority in that. There was tremendous hype at that time.

[betaby]

Never heard of him. But I'm more surprised that someone who saw the Internet in 1998 would say that!

[red-iron-pine]

there was a lot of skepticism, and from some heavy hitters.

Sears famously laughing at online orders is a great example. They already had the mail over market owned, and already had the distribution, sourcing, and utterly dominant brand recognition in that space. People used to order homes from Sears!

They just needed the online catalog. But the CEO was a psychopath Randian who thought the internet was a fad and now Amazon runs things.

Same with Toy R Us, and Radioshack, which did a lot of mail order.

[drivebyhooting]

Why does n choose 2 have a law named after it?

[disgruntledphd2]

Because Bob Metcalfe was a hell of a salesman.