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In 1998, Paul Krugman predicted the internet's impact on the economy would be no greater than the fax machine's
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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I read a follow up quote somewhere the last time I saw this that he said it sucks to be remembered for one dumb quote- though I feel like by ‘98 you’d have a better read than that, the internet wasn’t “new” in 98. The iMac which famously shipped with a built in 56k modem came out in 97.
I will say, the internet in 1998 looked nothing like the internet today. There was barely any commerce at all. 1998 is maybe the year you'd start to say that Amazon "made it", but even then the common take from established reporters was that they'd never be able to compete with brick and mortar booksellers like Barnes and Noble. To the extent that the average person was even aware that you could buy things on the internet, it was mostly because they'd heard that it was dangerous to use your credit card online.
At the time, the web was still pretty small. Google launched in 1998 -- prior to that Yahoo was the most popular "search engine", but Yahoo was mostly a human-curated list of web pages organized by topic. Windows 95 was still what most people used, and it didn't even come with a TCP/IP stack enabled.
Certainly not a brilliant prediction, but it's hindsight that takes it from "pretty mediocre take" to "comically stupid".
@deong
@AlmightySnoo @carl_dungeon
The quote points out exactly why an expert in one field, economics, shouldn’t be assumed to be an expert in adjacent fields, how technological progression will make new forms of business possible
In a 2013 interview, Krugman stated that the predictions were meant to be "fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting"
I'd say that too if I was that hilariously wrong about something.