QuoteProject
But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Jeff Bezos
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Bezos highlights the current limitations and primitive state of the Internet compared to its potential.

In this quote, Jeff Bezos compares the state of the Internet to the early days of technology, specifically referencing the 1908 Hurley washing machine. He suggests that, despite the advancements we've made, we are still operating at a rudimentary level with much inefficient and problematic technology that hampers our progress, emphasizing the need for further innovation and improvement in the digital landscape.

Themes

InternetTechnologyInnovationPrimitiveProgress

In practice

Example use cases

In a tech conference, discussing the future of digital innovation.

More from Jeff Bezos

We are our choices. Build yourself a great story.
Jeff BezosRead
Work hard, have fun and make history.
Jeff BezosRead
If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall and you won't see a different solution to a problem you're trying to solve.
Jeff BezosRead
Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
Jeff BezosRead
When you are eighty years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices.
Jeff BezosRead
We've done price elasticity studies, and the answer is always that we should raise prices. We don't do that, because we believe -- and we have to take this as an article of faith -- that by keeping our prices very, very low, we earn trust with customers over time, and that that actually does maximize free cash flow over the long term.
Jeff BezosRead

Similar quotes

I love what the Valley does. I love company building. I love startups. I love technology companies. I love new technology. I love this process of invention. Being able to participate in that as a founder and a product creator, or as an investor or a board member, I just find that hugely satisfying.
Marc AndreessenRead
The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future.
Tim Berners-LeeRead
Our growing ability to eliminate the slow-moving aspects of entertainment and go hopping from one peak to another is not without cost. Stand-up comics, movie-makers and others who earn their living entertaining no longer "waste" time with setups and plot development, lest we reach for the remote and click them off our screen. The result is a loss of subtlety, anticipation and nuance and, in the process, a coarsening of our discourse.
William RaspberryRead
If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.
Elon MuskRead
Quantum computation is a distinctively new way of harnessing nature. It will be the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes.
David DeutschRead
LISP has jokingly been described as "the most intelligent way to misuse a computer." I think that description is a great compliment because it transmits the full flavour of liberation: it has assisted a number of our most gifted fellow humans in thinking previously impossible thoughts.
Edsger DijkstraRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.