It's amazing to get a 90s perspective on the "information highway". Besides advanced home automation, self-driving cars wonder what types of immature technology we're working on today will just be mainstream in the next 2 decades.
Marketing people make me want to puke -- that's where terminology like that comes from. Just call it the internet and be done with it already!
Oh, and get off my lawn! xD
However in the 90's that analogy helped many non-technical people understand how to think about the internet. Back then did you have a better analogy?
BTW, as a marketing guy, it always bugs me every time anyone uses the term "marketing" when they mean "advertising". I'm not referring to you/your post but rather a general trend on HN and elsewhere.
Robotic manufacturing and inventory management (and not just by Toyota and Amazon, nearly all manufacturers and retailers). Productivity related drones. Virtual reality. Artificial intelligence that is very difficult to do without for consumers and businesses (so much so, that the UN will declare it a human right to have access to various AI systems 20 years from now). Commercialized therapies that use CRISPR. Routine tissue repair via stem-cell therapy. Routine organ growing & replacement for less complex organs. Immune system regeneration for those with compromised immune systems. M.S., Parkinson's, alzheimer's, diabetes, HIV, will all be cured except for edge cases (might be closer to 30 years, but some of those will get knocked out in 20, HIV for example).
So perhaps something similar - a tipping point of convenience. What's now on the edge, but could really change a consumption habit? Holograms? 3D printing?