Sometimes, major events only become historically significant with the benefit of hindsight. But then there are those occasions that are obviously important even in real time. The day Netscape went public in August of 1995 sounds like it fell into the latter category. In the blink of an eye, WIRED’s founding executive editor Kevin Kelly recalled, the contents of the web transformed and exploded. “Suddenly it became clear that ordinary people could create material anyone with a connection could view,” he wrote. “Netscape’s stock peaked at $75 on its first day of trading, and the world gasped in awe. Was this insanity, or the start of something new?”
Kelly reflected on this for WIRED on the 10th anniversary of Netscape’s IPO in 2005. His piece, “We Are the Web,” is incredibly touching, a sweet ode to much of what’s good about the internet: the way that it encourages collaboration and enfranchises ordinary people. Even though people registered the significance of Netscape’s public debut right away, few were able to imagine how massive and, frankly, miraculous the internet would become.
After looking back at the web’s evolution, Kelly turned his attention to the future. Where would the internet be in another 10 years? “What will most surprise us is how dependent we will be on what the Machine knows—about us and about what we want to know,” he speculated. “The more we teach this megacomputer, the more it will assume responsibility for our knowing. It will become our memory. Then it will become our identity. In 2015 many people, when divorced from the Machine, won’t feel like themselves—as if they’d had a lobotomy.”
It’s hard not to see a flicker of clairvoyance in Kelly’s words, especially as generative AI takes center stage in the tech world (for more on this, check out our AI Unlocked newsletter series). Our computers often do remember and even think for us. But as you may have gathered, I’m not one for hand-wringing. I’d like to think that the collaborative spirit Kelly highlighted in his piece is still extant online—between people, and between people and their machines. When was the last time you participated in something truly collaborative on the internet, or interacted with a device in a way that felt synergetic? Write me a note or let me know what you think in the comments below Kelly’s story.
See you next week!
Eve
