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!"

Comments

Not much has changed, really

[Daniel Dvorkin]

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.

Re:Not much has changed, really

[Kadin2048]

new (AKA reinvented) things like blogs and AJAX notwithstanding.

Reinvented is right. The "blog" is nothing new; back in 1994 there were probably quite a few of them. Except that lacking the word 'blog,' people just called them 'home pages.' Lots of people used to update their home pages obsessively, just typing in updates to the static HTML from the top down, so older stuff got pushed to the bottom of the page. Eventually when it would get too long, you'd copy and paste it onto a separate page.

What happened, IMO, is that HTML became too complex for the average person to deal with. (This was a combination of the complexity of creating a 'good looking' page increasing, and the technical skill of the average internet user declining.) There was a period of time when personal home pages almost died out, but then blogging software came out and allowed non-technical users to create pages without knowing any HTML.

Similarly, whenever I (have the misfortune to) visit MySpace, it reminds me of the early days of GeoCities and its "free web site" predecessors. Lots of very bad HTML and aesthetically questionable color choices, mostly driven out of vanity.

I think it's pretty safe that no matter where the technology goes, people are always going to want to write about themselves and the stuff they experience on a day to day basis; the tools and technologies for doing that will change, but the drive is always there.

Missed a few.

[Tackhead]

> I like how the only thing that's even remotely relevant today is that Nethack is still around and still entertaining.

I dunno. Kenny Greenberg's comments seemed to hit pretty hard:

Worst:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assist ance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act
• The Clipper Chip FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard)
• Obscenity prosecutions of BBSs
• Media hysteria about e-mail stalking and the threat to children on the Internet

Prediction:

• There will be a concerted effort by the U.S. Congress to regulate content on the Internet.

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".

Re:WWW

[slim]

Under the list Worst in Net Entertainment:

The organization of the World-Wide Web. I love the Web, but finding something specific on it is a nightmare. And because the Web is growing by leaps and bounds, I just don't see things getting easier anytime soon.

How little they knew ...

None of them predict search engines - because they were a genuine and unexpected innovation. 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.

I believe webspiders, and search engines built around data they collected, were the killer app that made the Web truly useful.

Not too wrong...

[Hoplite3]

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.