Things I Think I Think... The New Internet Era

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Things I Think I Think... The New Internet Era

Mulling out loud (and defending) why I think the next few years are a new "Internet Era".

31 May 2026

Unless you are not yet old enough to drink, or lived out in a shack above the treeline in a mountain range, you probably remember to some degree the "Internet Era". Also known as the "Dot-Com Era" (along with its closely-released sequel, the "Dot-Bomb Era"), it was a time when the Internet was new, the boundaries were untested, and everyone's credulity was pushed out to the utter limits.

The reason I bring this up, of course, is that current thinking among AI critics holds that we are on the cusp of a "post-bubble" AI phase. That is to say, the "AI bubble" (which is a real thing, I hold that as axiomatic) is going to pop any day now, and when it does, all kinds of chaos and terribleness is unleashed. However, I draw different conclusions out of the "Dot-Com/Bomb" eras, mostly because (a) I already feel like I know the bubble is going to burst, so I don't have any real questions there, but (b) I want to know what's going to survive the silicon "pop" and what's not. And by "what" I mean "who"--which companies will survive the shift and which won't?

In the early days of the Internet, focus was on the Internet itself. Like it was, on its own, the end goal. Companies were formed to be "E-" companies (anything with an "e" prefix, a la "eBay") or an "I-" company (anything with an "i" prefix, a la "iMac"s, which obviously were a product and not a company but at the moment I can't think of a good "I-" company that's still around). The emphasis was on "The Internet"--whatever the company did, "The Internet" was at the center of it. Everything revolved around "The Internet". Microsoft even famously decided that it was going to put "The Internet" at the centerpiece of its operating system, when it decided to have users "browse their desktop" 1. "The Internet" was going to make everyone a ton of money, and everyone knew it.

And companies responded accordingly, in some cases going so far as to create "Chief Internet Officers". (Not to be confused with its contemporary cousin, the "Chief Web Officer".)

Before I continue on, I'd like to point out that this is not the first time the industry has responded to a new technology by seeking to create a top-level C-suite role for it and then turning to that individual and saying, "Go on! Make it happen!" At the turn of the previous century, the world saw the emergence of the Chief Electricity Officer, a role designed to bring the company in line with the burgeoning field of "electricity".

Funny how we don't have any of those around anymore.

This is because as time progressed, we came to realize that focusing on the technology itself doesn't accomplish much. All of the companies that were formed to focus on the thing--in the most recent example, The Internet--eventually came to realize that the thing is only useful as a means to some other end. OReilly (the book publisher) had a commercial web server product, as competition to Netscape's and Microsoft 2's commercial offerings. Today, the HTTP protocol is so ubiquitous (and, it turned out, simple) that we run HTTP servers out of single-line Python scripts. Just as electricity eventually just became part of the purview of the staff that manage the building's physical presence--and in some buildings, particularly manufacturing operations, that's a nontrivial task, to be sure--and dropped out of the CxO suite accordingly.

Success in either era came only when people realized that "the thing" was nothing more than a means to an end, and established the end accordingly. Electricity helps manufacture things, or helps the staff work more efficiently (consistent lighting) or provides power to automation (washers, dryers, etc). The only people who do anything around the electrical grid itself are commercial power producers, the folks who install solar panels on your roof, and electricians.

Therefore, success in this upcoming era will not be to those who establish "Chief AI Officers", but understand that AI is simply now a (powerful) part of your implementation strategy, and act (and code and staff and train) accordingly . The "moat" isn't AI itself, and the frontier models are never going to be "moaty enough" to keep a...