How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone

by Brian McCullough

The entire computer, electronics and technology industry was converging on one singular device, one transcendent product that would seemingly be everything to everybody. And yet, few people seemed to care. All of these new features, all of these new technologies and computing innovations were converging inside the cell phone, pointing to a world of always-on, always-connected, always-updating information, but aside from those CrackBerry addicts and hard-charging professionals, most people didn’t see the point. Back in 1998, Steve Jobs famously told a Businessweek reporter that “a lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”27 In the case of the smartphone, in the case of the technology that would soon bend the entire arc of modern life toward the ubiquity of mobile computing, that would certainly prove to be true.