The Internet Is Still Early

TL;DR

1. The internet is still underrated and only has <70% global usage
2. The internet is mature enough, however, that we can begin to see its long-term impact
3. The most important thing to know is that the internet is far weirder and more bizarre than we could’ve predicted
4. Companies can take on much more ambitious missions while collapsing jobs, hiring one person where they would have hired two, and departments merging in ways totally impossible ten years ago
5. Industries that many expected to wither at the advent of  the internet, like books and bookstores, are thriving
6. AI is the culmination of thirty years of the commercial internet
7. All of this change is terrifying and exciting. Founders and operators have the latitude to wildly experiment and reinvent in ways that were never before possible. 

The internet is a seething mass of humanity: all of our knowledge and stupidity and joy and hatred shoved into pixels. Our early oracles predicted that the internet would become a digital savior—it would spread democracy and science throughout the world. That, well, that was wrong. What it did instead was spread us, in our excess and folly, everywhere, instantly. 

It is tempting to dismiss the internet as yesterday’s revolution. Surely, after 30 years of pop-ups and porn, we would’ve figured it out. The opposite is true. We haven’t even gotten everyone online yet.

In 2022, only 64.4% of the world had internet access. Of the planet's roughly 8B total residents, only 5.16B are online. In the U.S., the country where the internet browser was invented, we have plateaued at 93% internet usage. In countries earlier in the technology journey, the difference is stark: Kenya is sitting at 32%.