Benedict Evans

And then in 10 years time, it'll just be software.

Well, there's a famous book about financial bubbles called This Time is Different because people always say this time is different and it always is.

Like the dot-com bubble was different to like the late 80s and the Japanese financial bubble was different to, you know, pick any other bubble you want.

They're always different.

But that doesn't mean they're not a bubble.

And the same thing here.

I have a diagram I use a lot from 1995.

This research firm made a diagram of something they called cyberspace.

Because it wasn't clear it was just going to be the internet.

It was clear that everyone was going to have some kind of computer thing connected to some kind of network.

But remember the phrase information superhighway?

Which sort of conveys that it would be centralized and controlled by cable companies and phone companies and media companies, which is sort of how...

everything it was previously worked it wasn't cool no it was going to be the internet it wasn't clear the internet was going to be kind of radically decentralized and permissionless and anyone could do what they wanted it wasn't clear the internet was going to be the web and only the web because there were all these other things going on if you look at mary mika's first big public internet report from 1995 she has a separate forecast for web users and email users and she thought email users would be way bigger it wasn't clear like that was all one thing

And then it wasn't clear that it was about the browser.

It wasn't clear that the browser wasn't where the value capture was because Microsoft cray barred its way into dominance in browsers, but that turned out not to matter.

And then all the value was in site advertising and social, which were five years later and 10 years later.

And so you can be very, very clear that this is the thing and then still be completely unclear how it's going to work.

The same thing with mobile internet.

Just funny, mobile internet now is kind of like saying black and white television on color television.

Desktop internet, mobile internet, black and white TV, color TV.