No use in government setting standards. It would be one of the worst things that could happen because the pace of the technology and its innovation is happening so fast. If the government were actually able to deal with that, which in fact it is not, it would completely stall innovation. Government sets standards that don’t work.
Predictor: Andreessen, Marc
Prediction, in context:The following was taken from a transcript of a 1995 video interview of Marc Andreessen, conducted for the Smithsonian Institution by David K. Allison, curator of the division of information technology and society at the National Museum of American History: ”No use in government setting standards. It would be one of the worst things that could happen because the pace of the technology and its innovation is happening so fast. If the government were actually able to deal with that, which in fact it is not, it would completely stall innovation. Government sets standards that don’t work. Actually, the Internet is a great example of that. The government set a networking standard, OSI; nobody uses it. They finally just had to get rid of it. They all use TCP/IP which was not a government standard. Imagine if the government tried to make standards in software. The computer industry would have been stalled.”
Biography:Marc Andreessen worked with Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in 1992, to develop a browser that would be usable on any computer, easy to use and graphically rich. In 1993, their browser, Mosaic, completely changed the face of the Internet Ð it allowed HTML “image” tags which make it so text and art can appear on the same page; it allowed easy text scrolling; and it introduced hyperlinks, allowing users to simply click on an area of the screen to go to another document on the Internet. In1994, Mosaic was developed and marketed; the product eventually was named Netscape. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: June 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories
Title, headline, chapter name: Marc Andreessen
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/csr/comphist/ma1.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Allen, Patrick J.