Annotation
Kelly published this as a pep talk for entrepreneurs who thought they'd missed the internet gold rush. Twelve years in, the scorecard is hard to argue with: ChatGPT, TikTok, mRNA vaccines, CRISPR therapeutics, and generative AI did not exist as commercial products when he wrote the sentence, and several have already reshaped daily life more than anything from the first twenty years of the web. He even listed 'AI interfaces' among the technologies future citizens would take for granted. We are at the halfway mark of his thirty-year window, and the essay reads less like optimism than like a conservative estimate.
What Happened So Far
In the twelve years since Kelly wrote the essay, major commercial products that did not exist in 2014 have reshaped daily life: ChatGPT (2022), TikTok's global dominance (from 2018), generative AI tools, CRISPR therapeutics, and mRNA vaccines. Kelly specifically listed 'AI interfaces' among technologies future citizens would take for granted; by 2026, AI assistants had become embedded in search, productivity software, and consumer devices. At the halfway mark of his thirty-year window, the claim that the internet was 'still at the beginning' reads less like optimism than understatement.