[hx8]

A lot of the infrastructure made during the Dotcom boom was shortly discarded. How many dial-up modems were sold in the 90s?

The current AI bubble is leading to trained models that won't be feasible to retrain for a decade or longer after the bubble bursts.

[zerosizedweasle]

The wealth the Dotcom boom left behind wasn't in dial up modems or internet over the telephone, it was in the huge amounts of high speed fiber optic networks that were laid down. I think a lot of that infrastructure is still in use today, fiber optic cables can last 30 years or more.

[triceratops]

> fiber optic cables can last 30 years or more

The trenches for the cables even longer than that.

[ecommerceguy]

How much of it is still dark?

[yeasku]

Honestly, not that many people had modems.

[jorts]

In the late 90s to 2001? Many people were still using modems at that time. Cable or DSL wasn't even an option for a considerable percentage of the population.