Let's time-travel back to 1998. We all had AOL email addresses and dial-up modems, and the internet was this cool new toy you could log onto to get news, talk to your friends, and watch porn.
I was a print magazine editor at the time — part of a thriving, dynamic industry with bloated staffs and expense accounts. Most magazines had a dot.com department, but they were often on a different floor or relegated to a few sad, windowless cubicles near the storage closet.
Nobody. NOBODY could predict that the tech nerds with their strange words like "e-commerce" would take over the world, that ten years later, an entire generation of print magazine workers would have to scramble to reinvent themselves in a digital world that behemoths like Details, Shape, InStyle, Allure, Glamour (where I was in 1998) would either shut down or switch to online only.
But I see an analogous situation with AI today. A wolf is hovering by the door, and few of us want to think about how it will impact our lives.
Here’s what to expect.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Small Talk to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.