‘Radio rings a bell?’: Elon Musk shares 1995 interview where Bill Gates was mocked for backing internet

The Time magazine’s ‘Person of the Year 2021’, Elon Musk shared a throwback video featuring Bill Gates appearance on David Letterman’s show back in 1995. The TV host mocks the business magnate for backing the internet in the interview.

The Tesla CEO shared the TikTok video on Twitter on December 20. The clip was earlier shared on This Week In Startups TikTok account. American internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis can be seen watching the old clip from The David Letterman Show.

In the video, Calacanis gave a brief introduction to the television show initially. His instant responses to the interview are visible through split screen. Letterman can be heard asking Bill Gates,”…what about this internet thing, do you know anything about that?” The 1990s audience laughs out loud as Bill Gates says “Sure.” “What the hell is that exactly,” asks Letterman.

Bill Gates explains,” Well, it has become a place where people are publishing information so everybody can have their own homepage. Companies are there… its wild what’s going on. You can send electronic mail to people. Its the big new thing.” Letterman could not believe that a baseball game could be heard or watched on a computer. He also agrees that he is criticizing something he does not fully understand.

“But you know, its easy to criticize something you don’t fully understand, which is my position here. But I can remember, a couple of months ago there was like a big breakthrough announcement that on the internet or on some computer deal they were going to broadcast a baseball game… you could listen to a baseball game on your computer and I just thought to myself does radio ring a bell?”

The audience laughs out loud while Bill Gates point out the nuances of internet. “There is a difference. It’s not a huge difference, you can listen to the baseball game whenever you want,” says Bill Gates.

“So its stored in one of your memory deals and you can access it one year later,” Letterman replies. Again Letterman mocks, “Do tape recorders ring a bell?”

Calacanis comes up, defending internet towards the end of the video. “Its so easy now to look back on that and say well it’s global, it’s free and it’s accessible 24 hours a day for free and anybody can publish to it whereas only a small number of people can publish to the radio, right?

“There is a gatekeeper so we never even got to the gatekeeper part of this and those would be the other reasons that this is incredible. This is triggering all these discussions, I used to have where I tried to explain the internet to people when I was 23, 24. And that’s I think what’s happening now with web3,” he says in the  video.

Watch the video here:

Given the almost unimaginable nature of the present, what will the future be? pic.twitter.com/b2Yw0AXGVA

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021

The video has garnered over 4 million views. Netizens shared their enthusiasm towards technological development in the comments section.

I’m not suggesting web3 is real – seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now – just wondering what the future will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years. 2051 sounds crazy futuristic!

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021

The SpaceX CEO, Musk replied to his tweet, “I’m not suggesting web3 is real – seems more marketing buzzword than reality right now – just wondering what the future will be like in 10, 20 or 30 years. 2051 sounds crazy futuristic!”

‘Web3’ refers to Web 3.0, which could be the upgraded version of the World Wide Web. The function of Web3 would be to decentralise the internet fully, dampening the monopoly of big tech giants, as per Yahoo News.

A good way to predict the future is to build it

— Lex Fridman (@lexfridman) December 20, 2021

The human species is constantly learning and technology is enabling new frontiers all the time. The future is what we make it. Just gotta remember to keep our hands on the steering wheel 😉

— 𝙺𝚒𝚖𝚋𝚊𝚕 𝙼𝚞𝚜𝚔 (@kimbal) December 20, 2021

It stuns me that all of this has happened in less than a lifetime. We went from no internet to this massive connectivity and opportunity in less than a lifetime.

Imagine, what would the next 40 years can accomplish!

— Ankur Warikoo (@warikoo) December 20, 2021

The internet was already 5 years old when he “predicted” it.

— Mitch McKenzie, Esq. (@mitchsmckenzie) December 20, 2021

I can’t be more grateful for being born in this era. Also can’t imagine how would I have lived if I was born in the 1800s or 1900s (probably a nightmare)

Now imagine people in 2100 saying this same thing about us…

— marius manolachi (@marius_manola) December 20, 2021