How will the web change us?
We have this extraordinary store of knowledge that has no reason to die. What it will do to us and whether it will change us, I couldn't begin to guess. There are some very good websites for those who like a laugh, which portray for example 20 years of Bill Gates prophecies, which are hilarious, along the lines of I see no future in the Internet kind of prophecies. We're talking about an industry (the computer industry) that was shocked to discover that the year 2000 was going to follow the year 1999, and had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on recovering from this incredible surprise at the change of the century, which really caught them short. So the idea that they are the place to look for any kind of prediction of change is obvious nonsense. No one knew how the Web was going to change and develop. No one knew the hot site that people are talking about now five years ago. If they heard their names, they couldn't predict what they would look like or what services they would offer. And if they were described to them they would say they didn't sound very interesting. Instead they now find themselves visiting it 20 times a day and getting 400 links from their friends' emails all the time. So it is impossible to say. It is simply impossible. You know, one resorts to terrible clichés, about the imagination being the only boundary or something and nonsense like that. It's exciting, there's no question, it's very exciting.
