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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 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.
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
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.
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."
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.
What's truly amazing is how accurate they are, overall. (At least in spirit if not in exact details, which is understandable.) For instance:
... 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.
They were right!
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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]
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.
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?"
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.
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!).