20 years ago, what is now regarded as one of the major threats facing the developed world was then confined to sci-fi movies.
In a fascinating recent talk on the evolution of the internet, Dr Bob Pepper of Facebook produced some slides from a presentation he gave in 1997, when he was at the FCC. It’s almost embarrassing to recall a world in which 128 kbps was considered “high speed internet”, the largest quoted company in the world was General Electric (it’s now 13th), the dotcom bubble still had three years to reach bursting and Apple was 10 years away from launching the iPhone. Phrases like “the internet is looming” were the equivalent of today’s discussion about AI, machine learning and IoT.