Science & Tech Quote by Jay Chiat

Jay Chiat reaches for the oldest human technology to make a very 1990s point: the Internet is not a gadget, its infrastructure. Fire did not just make dinner possible; it reorganized society around heat, light, tools, and eventually industry. By yoking the Internet to that primal breakthrough, Chiat is trying to short-circuit the then-common view of online life as a niche activity for hobbyists and office workers. If fire is civilization’s operating system, the Internet is about to become the new default.

The little aside - "without fire, there would be no shopping, right?" - is doing more work than it seems. It’s half joke, half sales pitch, the cadence of an ad man reassuring you he’s still relatable while sliding in a sweeping claim: commerce is destiny. Shopping stands in for modern life itself, a consumer-culture metonym that reveals Chiat’s worldview. The Internet’s importance is argued less in terms of knowledge or democracy than in terms of transaction and habit.

Then comes the darker verb: "intrude". Chiat isn’t selling a utopia; he’s warning that this thing will get into everything, including childhood. The subtext is inevitability mixed with anxiety: the Internet will be as ambient and unavoidable as flame, and just as double-edged - enabling, mesmerizing, dangerous. Contextually, it’s an early recognition that technological revolutions don’t arrive as optional upgrades; they arrive as new environments, and kids, with fewer defenses and more time, become the frontline users.