Will the Iway be a fiber to the home. No. First: Fiber is inevitable, but inevitable is a long time – practically forever … Second: You want more than a choice of only one Iway fiber, wire or frequency … I vow to stop saying the information superhighway and start using the competitive plural, Iways. Third: … Home hubs and/or servers will plug into various Iways and distribute various services around homes on LANs [local-area networks]. Fourth: For a long time, Iways will not enter or even go right by many homes. Not even 500 channels of HDTV. Businesses will debug the Iways, and then later consumers will buy in.
Predictor: Metcalfe, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for InfoWorld, Internet pioneer and Ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe writes: ”Iway [information superhighway] fever is going the way of disco. Cyberspace hipsters are stringing out. Infrastructure wonks are gridlocking. Wideband tycoons are burning through their first rounds of venture capital. Iway conferences are still choked with celebrities, but their eager audiences have now taken to deflating the Iway with impolite questions. What is it anyway? Where’s the beef? Things are getting back to normal, thank goodness … Here are a few offbeat ideas. Will the Iway be a fiber to the home. No. First: Fiber is inevitable, but inevitable is a long time – practically forever. And no, they don’t have fiber to the home in Japan either. Second: You want more than a choice of only one Iway fiber, wire or frequency … I vow to stop saying the information superhighway and start using the competitive plural, Iways. Third: It is incomplete to think of Iways only going to homes. Not even from homes is good enough. I ways must also go into homes. Home hubs and/or servers will plug into various Iways and distribute various services around homes on LANs [local-area networks]. Fourth: For a long time, Iways will not enter or even go right by many homes. Not even 500 channels of HDTV. Businesses will debug the Iways, and then later consumers will buy in.”
Biography:Robert Metcalfe developed Ethernet technology at Xerox PARC in 1973 and later developed the networking company 3Comm. He is known for making the exaggerated 1995 prediction that due to an expected overload as people tried to connect, the Internet would “go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” He later jokingly ate his words, pureeing a paper copy of the article including this comment and swallowing it before a group of onlookers. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Pipeline/Switching/Hardware
Name of publication: InfoWorld
Title, headline, chapter name: Iway Frenzy Reaches Summit; Is the Next Phase All Downhill?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000000020419&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=1&Sid=2&RQT=309
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney