The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface | Imagining the Internet

The prediction, in brief:

The overriding danger to an open standard is Microsoft … One way or another … Mosaic is going to be on every computer in the world.

Predictor: Andreessen, Marc

Prediction, in context:

In a 1994 article for Wired magazine about the Internet’s latest killer app, Mosaic, Gary Wolf talks with Marc Andreessen of Mosaic. Wolf writes:”When I ask Andreessen about how Mosaic Communications’s Mosaic will reach consumers, he will not answer directly. He makes it clear that his company does not intend to put a shrink-wrapped product on the shelves. He implies that Mosaic Communications’s Mosaic will be licensed and shipped with ‘Internet-ready’ computers and operating systems. But if Andreessen wants to get Mosaic onto the desktop in this manner, then the partnership choice is obvious. Would Mosaic Communications do a deal with Bill Gates? Marc Andreessen isn’t telling. ‘The overriding danger to an open standard is Microsoft,’ he says. But at the end of our interview, while we are still dancing around the marketing question, Andreessen attempts to resolve it by simply stating his ambition. ‘One way or another,’ he says, ‘I think that Mosaic is going to be on every computer in the world.’ I wait for more. ‘One way or another,’ he repeats.”

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: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Language/Interface/Software

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

Quote Type: Paraphrase

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/mosaic_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney