This article also reminds me of where I used to pick up CD's back when they first came out - Tower Records in Mountain View, CA. CD's - still around; Tower Records - not so much. Interesting how it all worked out.
Anyway, I remember one night stuck on the cash register and bored, so I did some literal back of the envelope calculations. I took the CD storage capacity and the trend in increasing data rates for modems and figured out you'd be able to download albums in a practical amount of time in about the year 2000. I then told all my co-workers to not make a career of the record store business because we were all doomed by digital downloads in about 10 years.
Funny how much I got wrong but still got the end result right.