Judging from whence these ideas have come, current notions of a “successful” Internet should be severely distrusted. The shift from subsidized to commercial operation of the Internet’s plumbing has been going on for a long time and will simply take its course. Expecting Internetworking bandwidth to become so expensive that it will kill all this idle chatter (oops, culture) is paranoid and unrealistic. Expecting it to become a hugely profitable business also flies in the face of the increasingly commodity character of leased lines and packet engines.
Predictor: Stahlman, Mark
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 column for his online site DaveNet, Dave Winer interviews Mark Stahlman of New Media Associates. Stahlman says: ”So far the Internet is an unqualified commercial flop (despite some newly wealthy ISPs). Furthermore, since no one has yet figured out how to commercialize activities like *com-priv* (which remain the heart of the Internet as a culture), the future of the commercialization of the Net itself doesn’t look great. And, why should it? We netizens have been duped. Who says the Internet has to succeed commercially? Just because Al Gore (remember him?) says we need an NII [National Information Infrastructure] and a lot of folks felt good about being on a big-deal bandwagon doesn’t make any of the hoopla right … In fact, judging from whence these ideas have come, current notions of a ‘successful’ Internet should be severely distrusted. The shift from ‘subsidized’ to ‘commercial’ operation of the Internet’s plumbing has been going on for a long time and will simply take its course. Expecting Internetworking bandwidth to become so expensive that it will kill all this idle chatter (oops, culture) is paranoid and unrealistic. Expecting it to become a hugely profitable business also flies in the face of the increasingly commodity character of leased lines and packet engines. But trying to accommodate mass-market videophones with TCP/IP is just silly. Circuit-switched ISDN-based vidphones (i.e. non-Internet) will become very widespread long before ATM becomes a widely deployed network reality. The Internet cannot and should not be expected to do everything (or even most things). Except, of course, save the planet.”
Biography:Mark Stahlman was the president of the New York-based research and financial services firm New Media Associates in the 1990s. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: DaveNet
Title, headline, chapter name: Mark Stahlman Gets Real
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://davenet.userland.com/1994/12/07/markstahlmangetsreal
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Taylor, Kellen L.