These academic renegades, like everyone else, will find their own refuge in private, moderated online services. Once they congregate on such systems, what’s to stop them from enacting new “acceptable use policies” banning all commercial uses? These people can recapture the Internet as they knew it in the past, a legendary place where commerciality and the rules of the outside world did not apply, and which no one in the outside world really cared about.
Predictor: Rose, Lance
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 essay for ISPworld, Internet law expert Lance Rose comments about the expected crush of newbies on the Net and how they will influence Internet activity. Calling the crush “noise,” Rose concludes: ”The noise on the Net could lead to reinstituting the vanishing traditional Internet culture. Researchers, professors and college kids are being driven off the Internet proper as it switches over to mass-market use, filled with software agents wearing sandwich boards and coach potatoes rolling in by the bushel from ubiquitous Internet ‘on-ramps’ available now at every K-mart and Price Club. These academic renegades, like everyone else, will find their own refuge in private, moderated online services. Once they congregate on such systems, what’s to stop them from enacting new ‘acceptable use policies’ banning all commercial uses? These people can recapture the Internet as they knew it in the past, a legendary place where commerciality and the rules of the outside world did not apply, and which no one in the outside world really cared about.”
Biography:Lance Rose, a lawyer, earned a high profile for his expertise in Internet issues in the 1990s. He wrote “Netlaw: Your Rights in the Online World” (1995). (Legislator/Politician/Lawyer.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: ISPworld
Title, headline, chapter name: Legally Online: Noise and the Public Net
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.boardwatch.com/boardwatchOnline/1995/jan95/bwm44.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney