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You might just think about when years ago when I was at Frekenomics College, I lived in Europe for years and I had this dream of having a service, the business that I was going to set up, where you would basically call them and then they would sort of like solve your problem.

It's Jonathan Levin. I'm a professor of economics at Stanford University and I do research on microeconomics and particular on internet marketplaces and market design issues.

Few years ago, Levin was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which is what young economists often win before they eventually get a Nobel Prize.

So, what was this brilliant business idea he had while backpacking through Europe?

You sort of just about to get on the train, to go to Paris or to go to some other city or to wherever you were going. And when you arrived, you would call them back and they would have sort of made all the arrangements for you. And because it was so cumbersome to do anything like that.

Levin never followed through on his business idea, but other people did, lots of other people.

Want a private driver? You won't be surprised that there's an app for that. Uber lets you book a car or you can take a walk.

Open the table. That is a restaurant bookings.

Airbnb connects people who want to rent out a living space to travelers who need a place to stay.

This wasn't that long ago.

Levin is now in his early 40s. He's got kids. And the idea that like, that problem would like never cross the mind of my kids.

They'll just get on the train and they'll pull out their phone or maybe they'll do it on their glasses.

At that level of convenience for regular people, as opposed to just for the billionaires of the world, is really remarkable.

It's an amazing democratization of sort of personal service and convenience.

Now, if you were sitting back at the beginning of internet time and you were wondering what kind of people were in the best position to exploit this amazing new technology,

you might have thought it would be big institutions, multi-billion dollar firms, multi-trillion dollar industries, governments.

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