Bill Gates explains this “internet” thing #letterman
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN cites it as a classic example of public skepticism toward a new technology that later proved transformative.
What it is
A clip from a 1995 Late Show with David Letterman in which Bill Gates discusses Microsoft's origins and the internet while Dave is skeptical of computers.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2022 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites EGreg · 2022-11 · on “Chief scientist of major corporation can’t handle criticism of the work he hypes”
Well, that sounds exactly like what people said about all the other technologies that were "on a computer". Watch this exchange, for instance, between Bill Gates and David Letterman... about "this internet thing" [this video] Or the Today show wondering what the point is: [LINK] Technology empowers individuals and smaller communities. That's what it does throughout history. Personal computers. Personal printers. Now you can send email instead of relying on a centralized post office. VOIP disrupted Ma Bell monopolies in our lifetimes, instead of $3 a minute phone calls you can now do full videoonferencing for free. The Web instead of gatekeepers at radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, etc. In all of
Cites EGreg · 2022-12 · on “Stripe launches a fiat-to-crypto onramp”
Why can’t this argument be used against any new technology? They said exactly this about the Internet… why do you need it? See all the well established solutions at the time: [this video]
Cites chrisco255 · 2022-12 · on “Gen Z workers are not tech-savvy in the workplace – and it’s a growing problem”
If your grandfather had a tech job in Silicon Valley, and your dad programmed a university mainframe, you aren't representative of the general public. The general public didn't really start to adopt personal computers en masse until the 90s. And if you look at, for example, conversations between David Letterman and Bill Gates regarding the internet in the 1995 ( [this video] ), and Gates tries to explain to him the advantage of it and David pans that he doesn't get it, with the audience laughing along to dismissive jokes about it being unnecessary complexity versus radio and cassette tapes. That was the prevailing attitude regarding computers even well into the 90s (now, they're pervasive).
Cites pcthrowaway · 2023-05 · on “Google “We Have No Moat, and Neither Does OpenAI””
The infamous Bill Gates and David Letterman interview was in 1995: [this video] Lots of people definitely didn't understand what a big deal it was going to be then. In October 1994 a Wired journalist registered mcdonalds.com and then tried to give it to Mcdonalds, but couldn't reach anyone who understood the importance of domain name registration: [LINK] In my recollection it really wasn't til 1998-2001 or so that people (where I lived in the southern U.S. anyway) really started to take notice.