guy who predicted that the internet would be a flop and whose career amounted to taking potshots from a paper calling one of the greatest capital allocators of all time a fraud
> guy who predicted that the internet would be a flop
1. If you actually read the Snopes article, you'll see that his 1998 "prediction" was actually a humorous take on the Information Superhighway hoopla what was going on at the time.
3. If you do want to take his "prediction" seriously, he was of course wrong about the social impact of the Internet (which he has himself admitted, IIRC).
4. But if you look at the economic numbers of the productivity Internet, he was actually correct:
The Snopes article has him saying, about the article, "I was clearly trying to be provocative…". I would interpret that as being humorously contrarian.
He actually revisited the 1998 article in a 2023 NYT column:
The productivity numbers show he wasn't as wrong, economically, as folks try to make him out to be, which point (4) goes into. The research on computers and productivity goes back decades:
1. If you actually read the Snopes article, you'll see that his 1998 "prediction" was actually a humorous take on the Information Superhighway hoopla what was going on at the time.
2. Something else he wrote in 1998, in more serious matter, has been widely cited and was very important in the post-GFC world: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1998/06/1998b_b...
3. If you do want to take his "prediction" seriously, he was of course wrong about the social impact of the Internet (which he has himself admitted, IIRC).
4. But if you look at the economic numbers of the productivity Internet, he was actually correct:
* https://archive.ph/DUDEw
* https://archive.ph/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2...
There are a few chapters on the growth (and lack thereof) of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_American_...