A weeklong déjà vu: from the mid-90s web to the AI frontier
In the mid-90s I was here when the internet was exploding. Now it feels like reporting from a new frontier. Striking how similar. And different.
I am having a weeklong déjà vu moment.
Mid-90s. We were here a full year with Team 3 of the KaosPilots. The internet was exploding. Everyone getting their first e-mail (mine was ole@kaospilot.dk). Websites popping up overnight. It felt like a celebration.
We were at events and parties hosted by Cyborganic (Gardens), a (to me) flowery techy crowd, later an incredibly influential SF tech-commune and social club.
Met and played with then young and fresh IDEO. Hung out at AnonSalon, legendary art-and-party scene and clubhouse for the early Burning Man (never made it there!?!). Craig Newmark sending out early event emails, before Craigslist. The WELL already running (the text-only dial-up community Wired called “the world’s most influential online community”). Seeds of the early, really social web. Wired itself rising from its 93 start to journal stardom. The first dot-com boom.
All converging.
Me? I rode my silver bike through it all. Did get the virus, convinced it was possibly normal and forever. Started illustrating what my beautiful and wild, MUCH older, team mates did. Thank you 3s.
Now? Feels like reporting from the new frontier. Different vibe. AI posters, meetups and summits all over. People asking “are you in? On? Out?”
Last two weeks alone: the Data and AI Summit, the Big Technology Podcast, the inflection point where the US government asks Anthropic to switch off Fable 5. The SpaceX IPO, Center for Humane Technology at the Vatican, the Pope’s encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas.
Conversations with a Wired journalist about how it feels to brush Jensen Huang’s hair just before an interview. Debating the absurd venture sums in the US with a Korean serial entrepreneur and power-networker. Big questions with a Turkish one-man million-dollar-AI-company explaining “if you are not in, you are out”.
Striking how similar. And different. Dialogue and optimism. Politics, competition and a race for dominance in a New World Order. Abundance just around the hard turn?
Coming up: a Silicon Valley trip with a good old friend and mentor. Rumour has it the garages are full of builders: AI and robotics. Onwards: visits with 9Zero, Lighthaven and CHT (I have a big picture poster to deliver).
Team 3, help me. What do you remember? Where would you go if you had four more days in SF? And who would you meet?
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