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Predicting the Internet in 1995
Rexdude writes "Here is a list of predictions from 'The Internet' magazine at the end of 1994. It highlights the major changes and events on the net as it was back then (20 million users only, for starters).
Seems a throwback to a relatively more innocent time, when the unwashed masses had not taken over the net as much as today. And look at the reverence accorded to long dead protocols like Gopher!"
Here is a list of predictions from 'The Internet' magazine at the end of 1994.
So back then the internet was a magazine, eh?
(magazine also happens to be my favorite book)
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
I like how the only thing that's even remotely relevant today is that Nethack is still around and still entertaining. The complaint about the Web's organization has been solved mostly by the fact that there's a lot of stuff you don't want to find anyway!
There will always be porn on the internet.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
Firefox even supports it natively. Here's a gopher site you can visit today.
I was impressed that so many of the predictions hit on security and government regulation/censorship issues.
stuff |
I have a book from 1995 or so called "The Internet Yellow Pages" which seems to claim it lists every site on the Internet. It's about two inches thick and arranged by topic. There's sort of an even mix of Usenet newsgroups, gopher sites, telnet, WWW, listserv, and FTP.
Ah... well do I remember the days of TSR's hate-on for its fans! I missed the DikuMUD scenario, but if it was like the others, I'm sure it was dramatic.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Mind you, this give a good insight into the lifespan of a web page...
Frink: I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings in Europe will own them.
Apu: Could it be used for dating?
Frink: Well, technically, yes, but the computer matches would be so perfect as to eliminate the thrill of romantic conquest.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
God I loved that thing. I was relatively young at the time and it was unbelivably facinating to me.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
Under the list Worst in Net Entertainment:
How little they knew ...
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
People think it's wonderful how much cool stuff there is out there on the net. Online games are insanely addictive. Major gripes include spam, government regulation and censorship, and how difficult it is to find the information you want. Flamewars over global warming. Seriously, change some of the names (replace Mosaic with Firefox, Nethack with WoW, etc.) and most of what's written here wouldn't raise an eyebrow today. Maybe the only thing that's really changed is that a decade+ ago, these phenomena seemed more worth commenting on.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It may not be as popular as World of Warcraft, but nethack is still quite popular. I have been playing for some time and haven't finished the game yet. Perhaps many gamers today would not have the patience for it.
42
Well I thought this one was particularly prescient:
Conflicts between local and global Internet jurisdictions will become more pronounced, especially over censorship issues. How will prosecutors in Tennessee go after posters from Denmark?
A very good question indeed. Pity he didn't pick prosecutors in New York going after posters from Russia... let's hope the question remains unanswered.
It was also interesting how many of the 'big questions' in 1994 are now forgotten. Like SLIP versus PPP -- now, most people couldn't even tell you what either of them are. It went from being a big question, to a decided fact, and then faded into irrelevance. Now there's just "the Internet," and most people don't think about how they connect to it with their modem, if they use a modem at all. I wonder if HD-DVD vs BluRay will look the same way, in 10 years of hindsight?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
FTA
Prediction:
There will be a concerted effort by the U.S. Congress to regulate content on the Internet.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I dunno. Kenny Greenberg's comments seemed to hit pretty hard:
And as a reminder for those of you who got your hopes up in November of 2006 -- you might want to look at who was President in 1994. Hint: His last name wasn't "Bush".
Andrew, let me have your time traveling machine.
Andrew Kantor
(ak@mecklermedia.com)
Best:
* Media coverage. Sure, some of that coverage seems clueless, and some of it focuses; foolishly, but not surprisingly; on the seedier side of the Net (such as pornography and electronic stalkers). But 1994 saw the Internet finally hit the mainstr eam. Time and Newsweek now routinely print letters received through e-mail, and more importantly, it's no longer a novelty. The coverage in magazines on the supermarket check-out line has helped make the other "best" things possible.
* On-line shopping. The other best sign that the Net has hit the mainstream. Flowers, pizza, condoms, lobsters, books, music, and more are available, with other products sure to follow. Small companies can now have the same presence as larger ones. Who cares what neighborhood that bookstore is in?
* No more secrets. With more and more people on-line around the world, it's hard for anyone to get away with anything. Sure, a lot of things make their appearance in alt.conspiracies, but the Net has finally come into its own as a news source for the masses. It's no longer strange to hear, "I heard on the Net that Paul's going to have an affair on 'Mad About You.'"
* New providers, more products, and more books. The Internet is proof that capitalism works, and never has that been shown more than in 1994. Big companies like Netcom and AlterNet compete with local providers like Panix, Pipeline, and the Well. Consumers have more choices than ever in access providers, software, and reading material. As usual, the best succeeded and the rest are ending up on the bargain shelf.
Worst:
* Government intervention. They ruined the railroads and the phone companies, and now they're after the Internet. It works like this: Something is good, and private companies are selling it and making it work. The government decides it's a "right," and subsidizes one of those private companies to give it to people who can't afford it. The subsidized company soon runs the competition out of business and becomes a sponsored, sanctioned monopoly. The process has started with the Internet under the guise of "making the Information Superhighway available to everyone." It may sound good at first, but it's a bad idea. We may look back at 1994 as the beginning of the end of the high-quality Net.
* America Online. It let its users onto the Net with only the barest bit of training or preparation. It provided software that made it difficult for even the most savvy user to behave with proper netiquette. But the worst offense is that AOL, like other major on-line services, is taking from the Internet without giving back. Major providers like Alternet, Netcom, and PSI not only put users on the Net, they make available Gopher servers, FTP-able files, and other resources. AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy are only just beginning to do that, and to be proper net.citizens they must make more substance available to the rest of the Net.
* Canter and Siegel. A cheap shot, true, but still one of the worst events of 1994. It's more than simply the fact that they annoyed a few million users in more than 100 countries without showing remorse. The almost-disbarred-from-Tennessee lawyers gave the idea to others, and made people see marketing and sales opportunities that simply don't exist.
* Zealots. They're the people who have decided that they have the right to regulate; with threats or force if necessary; what is available on the Net.
Predictions:
* Cancelbot wars. As spamming and the spam-killing cancelbots become more widespread, people will find their Usenet News messages canceled by someone who simply doesn't like them. Cancelbot software will spread, as people begin editing out opposing view
Hostes alienigieni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
I was on the internet back then, much as, I suspect, a significant portion of slashdot users. The facts seem about right, but the writing makes me wonder if the article is a hoax.
"Within the next three years, everyone from AT& T to Sony to your cable company will offer on-line dating, electronic gambling, video on demand, and role-playing games via a set-top box. That's the Information Superhighway everyone wants! " PS3/Wii anyone?
WulframII - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Game
What's truly amazing is how accurate they are, overall. (At least in spirit if not in exact details, which is understandable.) For instance:
Hi -
/. summary, but at the very start of the article it says the list is from Internet World magazine. AFAIK, they still publish today, and are at iw.com
I don't know who posted the
TWR
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
... That Al Gore will be the leading cause of global warming. :P
Wow, they knew AOL was bad in 1995! Too bad they didn't warn the masses.
When my university newspaper decided to go online back in 1994, there was a serious debate about whether to use the web or gopher. The web was a cool new toy (Ooh! *Pictures*!) but hardly anywhere on campus except the computer lab had a connection fast enough to make practical use of it. Plus people were vastly more familiar with gopher.
A year later every dorm room was networked and gopher was history. It was a pretty stunning shift.
I'm pretty glad the newspaper didn't invest a lot of time and effort, in 1994, building the Daily U gopher site. That would have been... embarrassing.
... any mention of newsgroups (cancelbots and thread pointers are hilarious) and ISDN (especially its ubiquity), odd-numbered port assignments (browse to this.place.com port 5000). I was a big fan of ISDN until DSL came to fore, and (thankfully) newsgroups have once again gone well underground, leaving it for old farts and half-assed spammers.
Hurrah, progress!
-BA
They were right!
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Comments in this post until someone mentions "Google"?
Probably less than what it would take to mention "Nazis" I'd say.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No free wireless. Less content than TV. Lame.
;)
Well, there goes my positive karma rating
Bark less. Wag more.
Then, later on...
Now, twelve years on, did we actually get to "sculpt it into something we like" or did the Internet just take on a life of it's own and evolve into the entity that we now have? Also, the answer to the last question in the quote is "Yes...but you can also go broke quick."
Successfully condensing fact from the vapor of nuance since 1998.
Never say never eh.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I remember those days well. I had home dial-up at 2400 baud, but it was metered and expensive, and I could only afford 20 hours a month.
Then I discovered that my old university's library catalog had a BBS dial-in interface for anybody with a valid student number (easily skimmed from numerous sources on campus). Buried in the catalog system was a primitive gateway to the library's gopher pages, and while it wouldn't let you enter an arbitrary URI, I was able to find the right sequence of links to me to any gopher site on the net.
Then I found an http-gopher gateway that gave me primitive access to the web. From there I found an nttp-http gateway that gave me access to USENET, including all the binary groups. Jackpot!
Man, I downloaded a lot of free porn that summer.
Believe me, we tried...
Best Slashdot Co
It's simultaneously hard to believe that this was only 12 years ago, and that 12 years is all it's been. Is anyone else recounting their grey hairs right about now?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
For the most part, they aren't too wrong. Sure they're obsessed with ISDN, but only because it seemed like the only fast internet solution at the time. Other predictions, like better web browsers, were inevitable anyway. And they certainly nailed the fact that the TCP/IP stack would become common equipment in the next generation of OSes.
But they really liked usenet. The web forum has supplanted it, but they didn't really see that. http is the monster protocol that gobbled up almost all of the web functions. One poster talks about an application evolving that encapsulated all of the internet protocols in one easy interface. The modern webbrowser is pretty much that, with webmail, webforums, and built in (but less functional) ftp clients.
There are some predictions that are still up in the air. Do people prefer moderated content? It's hard to say. Sure, lots of people read cnn.com, but lots of people post on unmoderated forums, or use myspace, or other "user-generated" content.
I think the biggest thing they missed was data-mining. They thought people had to be involved in searching for information, in moderating content, etc in a centralized way. Using links, pageviews, user reviews, and user moderation some systems can organize themselves. (This isn't to cast doubt on experts. I still prefer a good editor to 1000 monkeys.)
And I guess one more thing: the whole idea of "everybody" is silly on the net. If a million people use usenet, it's still useful. The fact that ten or a hundred times more people use some sort of webforum is in many ways irrelevant. Both exist side-by-side. The first list on the article listed online Diplomacy as a fun game on the net. It still exists, probably with about the same number of players. Not anywhere near some flashgame sites in traffic, sure, but that doesn't change anything.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The Whole Internet: User's Guide and Catalog, 1st ed.
Best Slashdot Co
In probably less than 10 years video on demand plus larger capacity flash media will make HD-DVD vs. BluRay irrelevant... also mainly over convenience and quality/durability.
Convenience - no need to buy/store/insert/etc. a "big" physical disk, if you want to bring it to a friend's house load it on your ~50GB USB stick on your keychain, or just email it to them. Plus all the new gaming consoles are internet-connected and have the power to decode & play video and already cost (or soon will) the same as what a HD-DVD or Bluray player costs... makes you wonder why Sony even bothered with what kind of disk their console uses...
Quality/durability - if the video is streamed over fiber and not stored locally, a ridiculous encoding bitrate can be used. Nothing to break, if you want to watch the movie, just enter your login and start streaming, or save it on your hard drive.
Other than Door games, Doom was my first multiplayer (modem-enabled) game. My grades dropped immediately after night after night of intense death match sessions with people around the world or direct-dialed in my local area. Hacking was fun back then...
What a blast from the past. I remember using Gopher extensively back in 1993 in the U.Md computer labs. It was like you could find anything at the push of a button. Then I used Mosaic, with the pretty pictures and type fonts, and knew that was the future immediately. Problem was, bandwidth was so limited back then you couldn't do a whole lot graphically (most folks were working with 1200 or 2400 baud modems). So Gopher was often still the best choice. I remember the Internet Yellow Pages someone else referred to. And it took a half hour to download a single porn shot off usenet! Ah, the memories.
#4: RSS. Not a protocol, but a format. Close enough.
#8a: The easy access ended up coming, oddly enough, in the form of PPP with MSCHAP. Pretty much everyone supports it today and it provides better security than ordinary cleartext password authentication.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Predictions:
* Within the next three years, everyone from AT& T to Sony to your cable company will offer on-line dating, electronic gambling, video on demand, and role-playing games via a set-top box. That's the Information Superhighway everyone wants!
* In five years, prices on those set-top boxes will drop dramatically as vendors learn that their services are way too expensive and that people don't like getting information from their TVs. Ever heard of VideoTex? No? My point exactly.
* In five-and-a-half years, when people still aren't buying set-top boxes, vendors will realize that it wasn't because of high prices, rather that people don't want to gamble, date, or watch videos "on demand."
* The Information Superhighway as delivered via set-top boxes will die forever; a good idea gone awry (gone the way of Betamax); unless someone figures out what people really want, such as the ability to search reference works, participate in distance learning, search the holdings at the local library, and practice electronic democracy.
* None of the set-top cable services will ever replace the Internet.
Joel Snyder
(jms@opus1.com)
WebTV anyone?
Long dead protocol my ass. We had one running to support a legacy application until a few months ago, when I went through my normal legacy application decommissioning routine:
1) Ask if anyone is using app.
2) No response
3) Turn app off
4) Six months later, turn app back on because it's "mission critical".
So three months and the clock is still ticking....
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
send pics to meee tooo sample@example.com
> I think that is where I put my virginity, or a ham sandwitch. Not sure which.
:-)
Well, you still have one of the two of those. I'm guessing it's where you put the other one.
Besides, that witch of yours is likely to smell by now, being made of ham. Hope she doesn't send any sandstorms your way!
I find the last few lines interesting. They give titles to good books on the Internet. Nobody said that many books will be replaced or subsumed by the Internet. I really do think that another 10 years will see more changes from today than found in comparing this artifact from 1994.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
It has been renamed "This is True" and can be found at http://www.thisistrue.com/
There was never a 286SX. (If you know what the "SX/DX" suffixes indicate, you'll know why.) Perhaps you had a 386SX?
Web, Net, I-Way, etc... There were tons of dead tree magazines published between 94' to 97' that featured links of what's hot, etc... The proliferation of real search engines that worked pretty much killed that space.
It was a few months after being listed, in 1995 that the admins started charging, and the Free Internet Chess Server (where I enjoy playing) spun off...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freechess
Wow, doesn't this sound like Second Life? Second Life is just a graphical MUD/MUSH/MOO anyway.......
Layne
Usenet is useless shit, in my oppinion.
I thought it sucked when i first used it back in 1993, and still havent found any newsreaders that wasnt total fuckshit.
I rather have any kind of webforum.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Please don't read the Best/Worst of 1995 of Internet World. Now that was embarrassing...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
- I asked Google: "How far is Saturn from the Sun?"
It replied "Saturn - Distance From the Sun: Mean: 1427 million KM (9.539 au.)
Max: 1507 million KM (10.069 au.) Min: 1347 KM (9.008 au.)"
- I asked Google "What is the population of Fiji?"
It replied "Fiji -- Population: 905,949 (July 2006 Est.)"
It's actually pretty amazing when you think about it in 1995 terms.
Is it just me, or things didn't change all that much? So sad.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
Anytime I can read things like this, it makes me feel as if I could cut the nostalgia with a knife...
I swear that I read the article, like, a dozen years ago!
from Kevin Savetz :
f rom+the+Sun? t ion+of+Fiji?
Smart searches. The first intelligent agent software packages will emerge, allowing Net users to ask for a specific piece of information like "What is the population of Fiji?" or "How far is Saturn from the Sun?" An agent will go out on the Net , find the information, and return it without the user knowing the source
Not quite perfect yet, and fortunately the source is actually mentionned, but google does answer these questions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=How+far+is+Saturn+
http://www.google.com/search?q=What+is+the+popula
"Return of the editors. The CB radio effect; too much noise from too many people; will drive more people to moderated lists and newsgroups."
This argument sounds quite similar to the rhetoric of those pushing for more intervention in peering under the guise of "Net Neutrality", doesn't it?
This response is only to what I assumed the article would be about given the first four words of the title:
"One day we will be able to transfer all kinds of data through phone lines!"~Tesla
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Just to clarify; I wasn't implying that PPP is dead, because certainly it's still around. Everyone who uses dialup uses PPP (except for those few chumps still using AOL, and maybe even they have switched off of their proprietary protocol). It's because of its universality that it has lost its identity. People don't think about "SLIP vs PPP" anymore, it's just "dialup internet." PPP as a technology became encapsulated in other technologies, and basically disappeared below the surface of what's hidden to most users.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
...in the list of predictions.
It's not every day I read a Slashdot-linked article only to find my own byline. I must admit, it took some effort to dig through the piles of musty, cobwebbed neurons to recall even writing these predictions.
Glad to see I played it safe. Future prognosticators of the world: always go with the William Jennings Bryant line. He never lets you down.
And, hey, is ISDN awesome or what? 128kbps of pure double channel goodness. I told you!
. . . when someone could actually write, in all sincerity, "There's not much that's bad on the Net."
when Duke Nukem Forever would be released?
Jeopardy. I'm glad the IRC gaming channels are popular, but the #jeopardy channel is usually so crowded the game becomes a typing race rather than a trivia game. Maybe the newer game channels (#outburst and #boggle) will alleviate some of the crowding.
Oh, the memories.
I literally flunked out of college (twice!) because of this game.
I spent many, many, many hours (days? weeks? months?) in this channel playing. School work and studying be damned. Thanks Kenrick Mock for ruining my brief career at UC Davis!
The "strategy" was, one, you learned all the answers (in those days there might have been 1,000 game answers), two, you could type really fast, and, three, you had a decent non-lagged connection to the IRC Efnet. This was in the days when Efnet was very, very, very crowded (not NEARLY so many IRC nets as today) and it netsplit every 3 minutes or so.
Nowadays I guess it's #riskybus (due to lawsuit threats by the owners of Jeopardy!).
I had been using it for about 1 or 1 1/2 years when this was written, and it still didn't make the list.... real seers, these folks...
...amongst apologists on both sides: short and inaccurate.
You might want to look at who controlled congress in 1994
Well...looking back it seems that the Hollywood Party (R)(TM) (more commonly known as the Democrats) ran the entire show at that point. Yes, 1994 was a pivotal election year, however those elections happen at the END of the year and the new bums didn't throw out the old bums officially until 1995.
Congress writes the laws, the president merely signs them or vetoes them
Which begs the question that if Clinton was such a great president for the 'net and information freedom why he didn't actually USE those veto powers.
So, you've gone and voted out the Oil Party and brought back in the Hollywood Party. Somehow I don't foresee any big sea change in IP law as a result.
With PPP you can have one company owning the cable and several ISPs competing for the internet-acces. We got this situation in Germany where the T-COM owns the cable (and you pay them 16/month for access) and you can choose whichever Provider you want. Depending on the username/password you use, a different provider bills you.
"A lot" is two words. You wouldn't say "alittle", would you?
I might use that word alittle bit hereandthere, but I definately wouldn't use it alot.
And [!] don't allot the blame on me for the new abrev' that's now in common usage, anyone with mild deductive intelligence seems to be able grasp the meaning (context may after all be a usefull tool), so let it go dude. It's academic and egotistical.
I like Mike Godwin's comment: There's not much that's bad on the Net, ...
wow...only in 1994
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
Windows 95.
Laugh all you want, but the very fact that Windows 95 (even in its initial release) had a built-in SLIP/PPP functionality made it possible to easily set up dial-up and "always on" cable modem/DSL broadband Internet access. Before Windows 95, Windows 3.1x users had to install an add-on application to get SLIP/PPP Internet access from a true Internet Service Provider, something a lot of users didn't want to do.
I remember using the Web at around that time - before Yahoo attempted to create a directory, and Altavista produced their webspider-driven search engine. O'Reilly had a small directory of useful sites, but other than that the only way to find pages was by surfing from link to link, or by being given a URL out-of-band.
Before any of them was the first, the World Wide Web Worm. It predated Altavista, Yahoo!, Excite, and all the others. And it was moderately useful.
Thing is, the WWWW debuted in September of 1994. It should have made shockwaves among whoever made these predictions. It's surprising to me that the authors didn't mention search engines when they were already starting to make the web easier to use by 1995.
I believe webspiders, and search engines built around data they collected, were the killer app that made the Web truly useful.
I couldn't agree with you more.
Fascinating. The prediction I like best is
/><br />
<quote>ISDN access will become a common standard for small office and home office access, allowing lots of new applications from conferencing to software distribution...</quote>
I like it because ISDN development paid my salary for a few years! <URL:http://mckerracher.net/highway> But it never really took off except in Germany, and BT are now withdrawing <URL:http://tinyurl.com/y6ml9p> Home Highway here in the UK, so basic rate ISDN for SoHo use is essentially dead here. RIP [snif!]<br
It would have been more accurate to say that <em>DSL</em> access will become a common standard, since ADSL is now common and ISDN was essentially the first DSL technology. How long will digital subscriber loops last though, I wonder?
Phil McKerracher
Mods on crack again. Comment is not a troll, it's half humor, half truth. Someone mod back up.
Insert offensive troll-style sig here. Please mod or respond appropriately.
HTML was never a well designed markup language. Mixing structure with layout was a mistake made with HTML almost from the first. The only real innovation in HTML that was well designed was keeping things simple yet flexible. Before HTML hyperlinking systems tended to be either overly complex or to rigid of design.
The bad thing about HTML is that while it started off simple, the poorly conceived mixing of structure and layout, that kept getting crapped more and more into it's design, have kept making it more and more complex which of course is killing it's original advantage. It's largely this effect, combined with the influx of less intelligent people, that required the conception of the blog. That and the fact that 'home page' sounds lame while 'blog' sounds like nothing whatesoever so it can be a more popular buzzword.
I totally agree that other than some cute interfaces to make it easier to edit your home page there is nothing very different from a 1994 home page and today's blog. There was even the same ranting back then about how citizen journalism was going to kill corporate journalism - yada yada yada.
MySpace reeks in the same way GeoCities did. The lack of design skill on either is so bad as to be frightening. The sad thing is that most users don't even notice. You could offer free upgrades that looked nice and were easy to use and most users wouldn't use them. The whole mess looks like a Lisa Frank nightmare from hell. Even Lisa Frank's own website doesn't look that way as much as MySpace.
But then nothing is ever really new. It's just minor updates to what came before. Amazon wasn't the first to sell stuff online. eBay wasn't the first to auction stuff online. Flickr wasn't the first photo sharing site. WoW isn't any different than the graphical MUDs of the 90's. They just provided minor improvements to the interfaces, had cute names and some advertising money, and were in the right place at the right time.
It all just goes to prove that if you miss out on one wave to keep your idea around, spruce it up, give it a better name, get some advertising money, and try again on the next wave.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
IMO 13 still hasn't been done. Credit cards suck. They aren't especially secure, they aren't especially easy to use, they're expensive for retailers which of course pass the fees on to customers, and they give massive control of all commerce to a few central companies that control everything. PayPal is even worse although they do at least allow consumer to consumer transactions.
:)
The two big markets for online business is still in digital cash and shipping/fulfillment. Yes, pre-net companies have expanded a little to fill these gaps but they are really bandaid solutions. Someone that does either of these better and in a more net-friendly way stands to make huge amounts of money. Provide these key backend business services, and make them easier, faster, and cheaper, and you can own the keys to eBay, Amazon, Google, and damn near every major web company of the present or future. Sadly, I've never found an investor that could see that simple fact. Short-sighted rats!
Really these are things the government probably should provide but since they're not interested it leaves two big goldmines open to anyone with deep enough pockets and enough brains to do it better.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.