In 1998, the internet had only 147 million users worldwide. YouTube didn’t exist and Netflix, if it existed at all, only did DVD rentals. However, Elon Musk already had a very specific vision of what the internet would become in the future. Recently, the Tesla boss shared an excerpt from an interview he gave to CBS Sunday Morning in 1998, when he was only 27 years old.
In this interview, Musk describes the future of the internet as “the superset of all media”. “It’s the alpha and omega of the media. The written press, radio and television, that is to say all the media, will merge into the Internet,” he explained. Elon Musk also anticipated how the internet would change the way we consume media content. “The Internet is the first intelligent two-way communication method. It allows consumers to choose what they want to see, when they want to see it, whether on the radio, in print or on television. I think it will revolutionize all traditional media”also explained this one.
In his recent post on social network X, Musk comments: “The crazy thing is, they thought I was crazy for stating this super obvious prediction.”
Co-founder of Zip2
Elon Musk was interviewed as co-founder of Zip2. This is a startup created by Elon Musk, his brother Kimbal and Greg Kouri in 1995. This company has developed an urban guide on the internet with maps and yellow pages. And she targeted the media. In 2002, Zip2 was acquired by Conpaq and became part of Altavista.
Otherwise, we recall that it was only in 1999 that Elon Musk co-founded the online bank “X.com”, which then merged with another company to form PayPal. As for SpaceX, it was founded in 2002. And Elon Musk only became CEO of Tesla in 2008.
Today, in addition to having bought the social network X, Elon Musk also created the artificial intelligence laboratory xAI, which is developing a competitor to ChatGPT. And soon, the billionaire will co-lead the Department of Government Effectiveness, or DOGE, a new presidential commission in the new Trump administration.
- An interview with Elon Musk published in 1998 recently resurfaced
- In it, Musk very precisely predicted how the internet will transform the media
- At the time, Musk was just a co-founder of Zip2, a startup he created before X.com (which became PayPal)
