I respectfully respect the premise that the choices are "paper books" or "Youtube influencers", though I'll note we didn't have Gilbert Strang's 18.06 course back in 1999 either.

I'd also note that the Internet of 1999 was loaded with spam, bursting at the seams with it, so much so that it was actually a big deal when ~30 months later Paul Graham wrote a post about Bayesian filtering.

>Id also note that the Internet of 1999 was loaded with spam, bursting at the seams with it...

[gestures wildly at all the bots in 2026]