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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.
There will always be porn on the internet.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
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".
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:
Gopher rocked. I got on the net in '93 and I loved Gopher. I hated the web until I saw it using Mosaic. But Gopher compared to the early Lynx was no comparison, it was hard to find the links, and it was disorganized. Where Gopher was easy to navigate, and very structured. And then I saw the web with pictures, and I instantly got it.
They were right!
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
That's because Nethack is perfect.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
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.
I'm still running a gopher server. Its on an old linux box, but you can't get to it because id doesn't have net access. I also don't have a client for it so i really don't know whats in it.
I think that is where I put my virginity, or a ham sandwitch. Not sure which.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
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!
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.