The greatest threat to the original peer-to-peer Internet is probably the World Wide Web. While the Web was originally conceived as a groupware product, the wide success of Windows-based browsers has created a network in which a great many of the participants are no longer able to provide information, but only to consume it.
Predictor: O'Reilly, Tim
Prediction, in context:In a paper presented by Tim O’Reilly at INET ’95, a conference sponsored by the Internet Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, June 27-30, the publisher outlines his ideas about the future of Internet publishing: ”Clearly, there are huge opportunities for phone companies who realize where their business advantage lies, and embrace the Internet wholeheartedly as the natural successor and extension to the telephone. Despite the battle (which admittedly has died down over the past year) between the cable vs. telephony paradigms, the greatest threat to the original peer-to-peer Internet is probably the World Wide Web. While the Web was originally conceived as a groupware product, the wide success of Windows-based browsers has created a network in which a great many of the participants are no longer able to provide information, but only to consume it.”
Biography:Tim O’Reilly was founder and first president of O’Reilly & Associates, a computer-book-publishing company that helped popularize the Internet in the decade of the 1990s. His Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and one of the initial commercial sites on the World Wide Web. He received InfoWorld’s Industry Achievement Award in 1998 for his advocacy on behalf of the Open Source community. He served on the board of trustees for the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: June 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: ISOC INET '95 (conference)
Title, headline, chapter name: Publishing Models for Internet Commerce
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.isoc.org/HMP/PAPER/063/html/paper.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas