There have been five tech booms since Gordon Moore coined his eponymous Law in 1965:
- Mainframes (IBM, the BUNCH and minicomputers (1965-1982)
- PCs (1978-1985)
- Internet (aka “dot com”) (1995-2000)
- Smartphones (2007-present)
- AI (2023-present)
In my long experience, the AI boom is the biggest of all. Tom Friedman calls it “the second big bang.” Watch that. I think he’s right.
Business-wise, we get a lot of sky-pie, naturally. This, for example, from Mordor Intelligence:
Meanwhile, AI conferences are thick on the ground:
I have a feeling that’s one reason why I’ve been hearing that non-AI conferences are seeing less attendance. AI is a gold rush, like the one that left ships abandoned in San Francisco’s harbors in 1849 (the image above).
So I’m here to call your attention to three events next week that will all deal with AI, but in a deeply pragmatic way.
Chief among those is IIW, the Internet Identity Workshop, which has been going since 2005 and is about whatever participants want to work on. It’s an open space unconference, with no booths, speeches, or panels. It’s about what people want to work on and move forward. Wikipedia describes it pretty well. No doubt lots of the breakouts will be on AI, especially the personal kind. (Expect at least one from Liam Broza and Companion Intelligence. If you’re going to be there, I’ll add you and your work to this post.)
We have two IIWs every year, and the next one will be our 43rd. It happens next week, Tuesday to Thursday, 3 to 5 November, at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.
The day before, Monday the 2nd, is VRM Day, where we’ll be focusing on MyTerms, personal AI, and much more. Love to see you there too.
And the day after, Friday the 6th, is AIW, the Agentic Internet Workshop. Same format as IIW, but just one day and about agentic whatever (literally: you bring the topic, just like at IIW).
So register and mark your calendars.
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