In a resurfaced interview, Elon Musk has given his own glimpse into the future that's become oddly relevant again in 2024.
Whilst we've written plenty about the so-called mystics like Nostradamus and Baba Vanga predicting the future, they aren't the only ones who seem to have psychic powers.
Discussing the future of the internet back in 1998, CBS Sunday Morning asked Musk: "What do you see as the future of the internet?"
Long before he was taking over Twitter and three years before founding SpaceX, Musk predicted: "I think the internet is the superset of all media. It is the be-all and end-all of media.
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"One will see print, broadcast, arguably radio, essentially all media folding into the internet."
If that didn't sound bleak enough, Musk continued to explain what the internet amounts to: "It's the first of two-way communication that is intelligent.
“It allows consumers to choose what they want to see, when they want to see it, and whether that be radio, whether that be print, whether that be television broadcast, I think it's going to revolutionize all traditional media."
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Resharing the interview to X, Musk claims that people thought he was 'crazy' for predicting this change in how we consume our media.
While there's been something of a resurgence in television in terms of entertainment, the way we get our news and current affairs has taken a massive swing toward the internet.
Getting your content on-demand shows how far the internet has come, with some claiming Musk must be from the future.
Responding to his reshared post, someone on X wrote: "Ahead of your time or time traveler? 🧐"
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Another added: "Reminded me of Nikola Tesla. He was often laughed at for his wild ideas, dismissed as impossible. But he kept going, even on lonely roads..."
Still, Musk might not be the future-predicting deity some bill him as, as someone else said: "What I wanna know is where are our flying cars?"
With around 45 million people using the internet in 1996 and this having climbed to 150 million by 1999 (over half being in the USA), a fourth concluded: "Super obvious prediction 💀"
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It's no coincidence that Musk has been so involved in getting the internet to us. His Starlink project aims to give more than just internet to the world's first private space station, aiming to provide 'global mobile broadband'. This high-speed internet especially hopes to connect those in low-income and remote areas.
Musk has plenty of views on where we're heading in terms of artificial intelligence, so let's come back in another 26 years and see whether he's right about that, too.
Whether Elon Musk was ahead of the curve or not, it's wild to see how far the internet has come from those days when you couldn't use the phone and the World Wide Web at the same time.