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Had all gone according to plan, the two young academics would have created their uncannily accurate search engine, published the results in an important academic paper, earned their PhDs, and become professors. At the same time, the search engine they developed—at first called BackRub and later Goo…

Upon achieving that $ 100 billion milestone, Bezos was prompted to look back twenty years to when he was “driving the packages to the post office myself and hoping we might one day afford a forklift.”

“The idea,” which Shaw says occurred to him and Bezos, “was always that someone would be allowed to make a profit as an intermediary. The key question is, ‘Who will get to be that middleman?’”

In another Twitter essay, Andreessen argued that technological progress has benefited the poor much more than the rich—an observation he insists “flows from basic economics.” Therefore, he writes, “Opposing tech innovation is punishing the poor by slowing the process by which they get things previo…

In fact, McCarthy and the other early hackers were critical of those who saw the computer revolution as a path to personal wealth or its close cousin, personal power. Even Lou Montulli recalls being taken aback by the promise of a quick fortune from Jim Clark. “He filled our heads with giant number…