Balaji Srinivasan

the concept of being internet first, what it means, what it means for our values, what it means for the world.

So first, internet first.

So can you guys see the screen where it says the internet century?

Okay, so the single most important force in the entire world, yet still underestimated, is the rise of the global internet.

It is the first thing you see often when you wake up in the morning and the last thing at night.

It is, perhaps it's even monitoring your sleep or doing fitness tracking.

Perhaps it's even doing, you know, some sort of agent that's acting for you online, right?

So it's completely ubiquitous.

And you know, fish can't see water.

As Orwell says, it takes a capital effort, a huge effort to see what's in front of one's nose.

The internet's in front of your nose all the time.

Arguably, the key moment was 1991.

It wasn't just the fall of communism in the Soviet Union.

It was also the rise of capitalism on the Internet because something called the NSF acceptable use policy that was repealed.

And that was actually a thing that was blocking capitalism on the Internet.

Up to that point, the Internet was an educational and military network only.

And all the guys said, hey, if you legalize capitalism on the Internet, you're going to get spam and scams and porn and malware.

And of course, they were right.

But.

We also got all the dot coms and it was net good, right?