The prediction, in brief:

Every roadway has been built explicitly to lessen traffic, yet today’s traffic jams are worse than ever … In the same way, I doubt that adding bandwidth to the Internet will solve future bandwidth crunches. Indeed, we’ll only find more people trolling the Net, trucking larger files across the wires.

Predictor: Stoll, Clifford

Prediction, in context:

In his 1995 book “Silicon Snake Oil,” writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the Internet’s future implications:”Add more bandwidth to the backbone. Install faster fiberoptic links. Build more file servers. Double the bandwidth, and files zip twice as fast. A nice technical patch … This will cure the Internet bandwidth problem in exactly the same way that building more highways will solve traffic congestion. The number of bytes or cars traveling across the continent increases. Have we learned nothing from the past five decades of highway construction? Every roadway has been built explicitly to lessen traffic, yet today’s traffic jams are worse than ever … In the same way, I doubt that adding bandwidth to the Internet will solve future bandwidth crunches. Indeed, we’ll only find more people trolling the Net, trucking larger files across the wires.”

Biography:

Clifford Stoll was an astrophysicist who also wrote the influential books “Silicon Snake Oil” (1995) and “The Cuckoo’s Egg.” A long-time network user, Stoll made “Silicon Snake Oil” his platform for finding fault with the Internet hype of the early 1990s. He pointed out the pitfalls of a completely networked society and offered arguments in opposition to the hype. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Bandwidth

Name of publication: Silicon Snake Oil

Title, headline, chapter name: Wherein the Author Considers the Future of the Library, the Myth of Free Information, and a Novel Way to Heat Bathwater

Quote Type: Partial quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 206, 207

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Tencer, Elizabeth L.