Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450, over 500 years ago. Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, nearly 150 years ago. John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a television in 1926, nearly 100 years ago.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the modern day internet (the World Wide Web) in 1989, just 30 years ago…
The internet is STILL incredibly young.
Today, the 5 largest US companies by market capitalization are Apple, Microsoft, Google (aka Alphabet), Amazon, and Tesla. Each of these corporate behemoths, with the exception of Tesla, are fundamentally internet-based companies.
Within just a few decades, the internet has taken over the world.
Unlike other revolutionary technologies, the innovative capacity of the internet is in a league of its own. The printing press. The telephone. The television. These historic, transformative technologies were all “narrow” developments. Each innovation was developed with a specific purpose in mind, and the subsequent end-products served those intended purposes.
But the internet is a different story. While it’s true that the World Wide Web was originally built with the narrow intention of improving information-sharing across research universities, its development led to unimaginable innovation. Commerce, transportation, communication, education, health care, agriculture, etc. Like a virus, the internet has run rampant, and nobody could have predicted the extent of its reach.
“Software is eating the world.” - Marc Andressen (2011)
When Andressen wrote this, I wonder just how much of the future he could see coming. Since his publishing of that post in 2011, we’ve seen the founding of Peloton (2012), Carvana (2012), DoorDash (2013), Robinhood (2013), Discord (2015), Pinduoduo (2015), TikTok (2016), SubStack (2017), FTX (2019) and more. The rise of dating apps. The spread of streaming services. The cryptocurrency craze. The proliferation of podcasting. All of this in just the last decade…
The internet is STILL the future.
For the investment-savvy, it doesn’t take long to see the magic of software. When you operate in the digital world and can push product instantly at zero marginal cost, it’s like competing with cheat-codes against traditional firms. Yet somehow, there are still professional investors that can’t get past “high” valuation multiples of tech companies. Old rules die hard.
As evidenced by the pools of capital being amassed in venture capital, much of the investment world has caught on. But society at large most certainly has not.
People do poorly with non-linearity. Some examples:
1. Starting with one grain of wheat, if you double the grains on each successive square of a chess board, you’ll end up with more than 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 (eighteen quintillion) grains of wheat - over 2,000 times the annual production of wheat.
2. More than 90% of Warren Buffett’s net worth was amassed after he turned 65 years old.
3. A standard piece of paper can be folded on itself no more than 7 times.
These are a few examples of exponential phenomena at work, and none of them are intuitive.
Because there are no explicit incentives to understanding the exponential consequences of the internet, people don’t actively think about it. Most are comfortable enjoying the benefits of the internet’s innovations as a consumer. Only a very small percentage have any real interest in understanding it.
The internet is STILL underrated.
My experimentation with speaking, writing, and learning online is ultimately an expression of my conviction in this statement.
Last week, I wrote about opportunity cost - the concept that every action has implicit costs associated with it. In that piece, I explain how taking opportunity costs seriously forces you to be thoughtful in evaluating all potential actions in your opportunity set. The longer I think about the internet, the more I’m convinced that building an online identity reflects my greatest opportunity cost.
As children, we dream about having superpowers. Super strength, speed, intelligence, vision, flexibility, etc. Harnessing the internet’s leverage is the closest thing we have to a super power. The ability to instantly scale your ideas with complete ownership and autonomy is unimaginably powerful. Just like businesses unlock the ability to scale their services, the internet allows individuals the ability to scale their identities.
Now, I realize that this process of personal experimentation will likely need time before finding any momentum. But as I patiently wait, I’ll continue to diligently share my ideas here. Even if little tangible progress is made near-term, I can take comfort in the fact that it’s still early innings for the internet.
