Lessons from 1999: How Tech Choices Shape the Future of AI
Exploring a 1999 Texas A&M web project to reveal why Apple and Google are poised to win the AI race through integration and cost efficiency.
This show was created with Jellypod, the AI Podcast Studio. Create your own podcast with Jellypod today.
Get StartedIs this your podcast and want to remove this banner? Click here.
Chapter 1
Imported Transcript
Timothy Chester
In 1999, at Texas A&M, I was building the university’s first web-based course registration system. The architecture was straightforward. Web servers handled the interface, XML messages carried transactions back to the mainframe, and two teams with very different cultures learned to work in lockstep.
Timothy Chester
Six months before launch, the server team recommended buying an Amdahl server for the web layer to ensure power and throughput. It was massive, expensive, and clearly built for a mainframe-based world that the web was already moving past. My team favored small, inexpensive Compaq servers running Microsoft Windows. We chose Compaq due to budget constraints.
Timothy Chester
Today, the AI industry assumes larger GPUs are the solution to all problems. However, history suggests that the long-term winners are those who integrate tightly, drive marginal costs to zero, and let technology recede into the background. In today’s Dispatch, we use that lens to examine why Apple and Google are better positioned for what comes next, and how they should prevail in today’s AI wars.