‘Blockbuster Will Be in the Home Soon’ and Other Internet Predictions from a 2000 Tech Conference
The first and only Tribeca Technology Conference was an odd mix of Hollywood celebrities and internet startups reeling from the dot-com crash
In the fall of 2000, before we lost our innocence, before the towers came crashing down, before a Harvard dropout connected and upended the world, and when “binge” still meant wildly over-eating, Tribeca Films held a digital film and technology conference.
No, this wasn’t the nascent Tribeca Film Festival, which is running in Manhattan through June 20. There were no red carpets, no premiering films, just discussions about how technology and the Internet were changing film and entertainment. It would be almost another two years before Tribeca Film founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal would, in response to the just blocks away devastation of 9/11, launch the Tribeca Film Festival to revitalize the area and New York City.
This conference was a different idea, one that was not much less necessary and that responded to and attempted to digest an evolution in filmmaking and creativity. I often think that, had it not been for the horror of 9/11, Tribeca might have simply held this conference again…
