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> The second I went online and tried a random chat website, I knew that what I was witnessing was rudimentary but would become revolutionary

By witnessing a chat website you immediately grasped that the internet (web) is something dynamic, not static.

The economics professor probably had a different perception of the internet at that time, thinking web pages were static documents (in a way similiar to a fax).

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In some ways, this is the curse of early adoption. It's often the case with emerging technology that the use-cases for it start off as slightly more efficient ways of doing things. It can be hard to see past those use cases, especially when you work in a different field.

Said professor probably saw the internet has more of a fancy distributed library system. Without working with the underlying technology, it can be hard to see how something will flesh out.

Early iterations of tech often sucks. It's easy to dismiss technology that barely works as unlikely to overcome the major hurdles it is encountering. Think: self-driving cars.

The question that spring to mind is, when do you know if an information technology is more like the telephone or more like the fax. Also is there some clear consensus on the impact of the telephone had on the economy ?

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