CHAPTER ONE / AN IDEA BEFORE ITS TIME
It started with a book.
And a very big number.
In the 1990s, my co-author Rick Broadhead and I were immersed in a world that was changing almost faster than we could write about it. The Internet was escaping universities and research laboratories and entering homes, offices and everyday conversations. People wanted to know what it was, how it worked and what it might mean for their businesses and careers. Our books began by helping them get connected. Before long, the more interesting question was what would happen after everyone was connected.
By 2000, that question had become a book: From Light Bulbs to Yottabits: How to Profit by Understanding the Internet of the Future. It was an attempt to look beyond the websites and companies capturing the headlines and examine the deeper forces changing the world. We wrote about extraordinary increases in network capacity, connected homes, Internet-delivered media, new business models and the changing nature of work. The details were often uncertain; the scale of the possibility was what fascinated us.
We needed a name that could convey something almost impossible to picture. We found one at the far end of the scale used to measure digital information: yotta, a prefix representing 10²⁴—or one septillion. That is a one followed by twenty-four zeros. At the time, the manuscript described a yottabit of network capacity as something closer to science fiction than to everyday engineering.
“We’ve taken but baby steps into the future.”
We were describing the Internet of the late 1990s. Twenty-six years later, I still think the observation is worth revisiting.
There was a reason for
the light bulbs, too.
Our book contained two recurring features. “Light Bulbs” were prompts to think differently: ideas to explore, questions to ask and possibilities worth considering. “Yottabits” were the striking numbers and facts that helped readers grasp the astonishing changes underway. One encouraged curiosity; the other made the scale tangible.
That old structure turns out to be a pretty good explanation for the website you are reading now. The YottaBit WOW Facts make extraordinary developments understandable through numbers. The stories explore where those developments might lead, how technologies connect and what the changes could mean for your life, career, business or industry. We are asking much the same questions—only the technologies and the scale of their consequences have changed.