The Greatest Invention Is…

I have seen it come together from its earliest days—the pipes, the software, the browser, the applications, the devices to get access to it; to harness it, to abuse it. Back in 1999, Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr commented: “Believe it or not, the Internet is actually underhyped.” He called it “the largest legal creation of wealth in the history of the planet.” He was so on the money. Twenty-five years later, 10 out of the world’s 12 trillion-dollar companies are internet or internet-related companies.

It is a great societal engine as well. Like all great inventions of the past—the wheel, the steam engine, and the internal combustion engine—it has compressed time and distance. It is like a time machine. It has essentially made us question every premise.

What is a bookstore?
What is a library?
What is a border?
Who is a friend?
Where and how do we find love?
What do we do?
How do we do it?
Why we do what we do?
What is reality, even?

It is because of it that we are now looking at who we will be as a species—a carbon-based life form that coexists with robots and machines, or one enslaved to its own past, its digitized form.

So yes, the internet is indeed the greatest invention of my time. It is central to who we are as a species now. And all other inventions, in one way or another, run through it.