NATHAN MYHRVOLD PhD ORAL HISTORY - The Computerworld ...

The second thing is, wasn’t Chuck Yeager that broke the sound barrier, but that
Sauropods did it earlier, and it took over 100 million years before another species on
earth learned the trick, and figured out how to go faster than the speed of sound.
DA: One last question that I have for you. We haven’t talked too much about
your vision of the future and we could spend another three or four hours on that.
NM: That’s my job after all.
DA: I wonder if they’re a couple of things that you feel like you really see coming
that you’d like to comment on maybe different from sort of what you see others
saying, and if there are a couple of things that you may have some concern about
coming out of this technology. Just to sort of wrap things up here.
NM: Well I think that computer information communications technology is all
becoming a blur in one topic. Paradoxically it is over hyped in the short run, and
under hyped in the long run. In the short run, we read everyday about some new
breakthrough, and some new Internet company’s going to take over the world, and
all of a sudden the company’s worth a billion dollars, and you know, oh my god the
world will change by next Thursday, and they’ll be convergence of TV and
computers and the sewing machines and god knows what.
A lot of it is very over-wrought. Yet in the long run I think it’s under hyped, because
I think people miss the tremendous power of putting people in touch with another in
new ways. If you want a one-person talk to another person, the telephone is a great
way. It changed person-to-person communications. It abstracted geography from it
largely. It only works at the one to one level. Conference calls for work for like ten
people, past that it gets very unwieldy, and people don’t even like doing conference
calls.
Television worked in another mode. It worked from one to a million. So if you sit
down in front of the TV camera now, circa 1998, it’s hard to address less than a
million people because broadcast channels are precious. We share only a small
number across the whole population. Although not a million people may not choose
to watch it, you have to offer it to a million, and you have to make the opportunity
meet cost assessment, is this worth a million? But television has changed the world,
because one to a million is very important. And by abstracting geography out of the
one to a million thing, it’s had enormous effects on culture and politics and every
aspect of today’s life.
Nathan Myhrvold
Oral History
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