This is always personally kind of curious to me, because, at the same time Andreessen was the young "hayseed with the know-how" (as I think JWZ once called him) working on NCSA Mosaic and then mcom/Netscape... I was also a (slightly younger) Internet-savvy Unix workstations programmer, working in a science park out in Oregon farm country.
My own awareness and leanings were more towards traditional Internet altruistic/egalitarian, with a healthy skepticism of government and business in practice, and keeping an eye out against exploiters.
(Separately, a more libertarian school of thought was also represented among the early Internet-savvy, but I had less exposure to that.)
Sometimes I wonder what would've happened to the modern Web and tech industry, if certain formative figures in dotcoms had been of the more traditional altruistic/egalitarian Internet kind.
But maybe they wouldn't have been able to get that influence, given their mindset and motivations.
Maybe big money would've bought and colluded their way to shaping the Internet how they wanted, in any case.
Certainly, a bit into dotcoms, the Google founders sounded to me like "one of us". But I think I was also quick to assume they were, when they did some smart things, and said some things ("don't be evil") that I expected from one of us.
My own awareness and leanings were more towards traditional Internet altruistic/egalitarian, with a healthy skepticism of government and business in practice, and keeping an eye out against exploiters.
(Separately, a more libertarian school of thought was also represented among the early Internet-savvy, but I had less exposure to that.)
Sometimes I wonder what would've happened to the modern Web and tech industry, if certain formative figures in dotcoms had been of the more traditional altruistic/egalitarian Internet kind.
But maybe they wouldn't have been able to get that influence, given their mindset and motivations.
Maybe big money would've bought and colluded their way to shaping the Internet how they wanted, in any case.
Certainly, a bit into dotcoms, the Google founders sounded to me like "one of us". But I think I was also quick to assume they were, when they did some smart things, and said some things ("don't be evil") that I expected from one of us.