Six years ago this month Jenna and I were at a concert in London, with no idea that the world was on the verge of being turned upside down.

If I had to find a silver lining to the Covid madness, it would be that I met some smart and courageous people I wouldn't have met otherwise. Small consolation, to be sure, but if you had a gun to my head that's what I'd say.

One of them was Ken McCarthy, whom you've heard on the Tom Woods Show. Ken is the godfather of Internet marketing, so when I heard he was trying to reach me, I was astonished he even knew who I was. His System Club Letters book had been a huge help to me.

Ken's book How the Web Won is a fascinating look at the development of the World Wide Web from the perspective of someone who played a major role during the formative years of 1993 to 1995, and how a small group of people stopped it from going down a very bad road.

Ken also saw things others didn't. He used to sell training CDs through the mail, so his biggest expense was shipping. Naturally he was interested in anything that might cut -- or, somehow, even eliminate -- that expense.

Ken believed that in addition to selling his CDs online, he'd even be able to stream their content, or even make them available for download. More broadly, he believed in the commercial potential of the Internet at a time when nobody saw that side of it at all.

The consensus was that the Web would be a giant database, a reference tool, an encyclopedia. Hobbyists might use bulletin boards on it, and universities and research institutions might share scientific papers with each other and transfer data.

Ken's view sounds obvious to us now, and it seems crazy that there was a time when people couldn't imagine buying and selling taking place online.

You will recall Paul Krugman's later prediction, too: "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

So understand that from the very beginning, people didn't understand what they had at their fingertips, and were leaving massive uses on the table.

That remains true today.

Apart from a handful of people like Ken, nobody thought the Web could be monetized at all.

Nowadays people understand how Walmart monetizes it, but not how they themselves can. Instead, that phone in their pocket relentlessly pursues them, and makes them feel like they're never fully not at work.

TONIGHT at 8pm Eastern we'll get to the bottom of all of this. We're all walking around with miracles at our fingertips. It's about time we made them pay.

Click here to reserve your spot:

https://www.tomwoods.com/encore

Tom Woods