Anyone know the current record-holder for world's smallest web server? :)

Ahh, back in the hopeful days of the early net when we imagined people of the future would be in possession of and run their own webservers...

It’s sad isn’t (wasn’t) such a professor as a waste of money? I mean the market dictates what we get, with some influential persons and companies, but it’s all chance.

Why do we have these well paid professors working on stuff like this?

I think if we feel that we do need them, they should be laser focused on making sure there are societal benefits to tech. Not “working on cool stuff”.

Or is this no longer happening?

Interesting how he was kind of, but not quite, on the right track in terms of predicting where technology would go. Small "wearable" (in the sense that you carry them on your person) computers obviously became huge, but not in the way that he was thinking. I was a kid back then, so wasn't thinking too deeply about the future of technology, but mobile phones were already a thing and some were becoming internet-compatible, so in hindsight smartphones seem a more obvious next step than "a special glove that can recognize a digital sign language". Maybe not at the time though.