If we’re going to build that highway, we have to be able to figure out how people can use it for cheap … We can have one class of service that is paid for by the rich, and another one that is cheap and easy to get on. We can run them in parallel.
Predictor: Lynch, Daniel C.
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 interview for Telecommunications magazine, Martha Strizich talks with InterOp and NetWorld founder Daniel Lynch about the future of networking. Strizich asks, “Can the Internet handle the growth this worldwide popularity is generating?” Lynch replies: ”Not without some changes. IP was designed to run over everything by people who understood that the goal was to move data – it doesn’t care who owns the data, it just moves it. What’s failing in this whole thing is that it got bigger than we thought it would, so we’re running out of address bits. But the address bit part is going to be solved by the end of the year. That’s the easy part. The hard part is establishing different classes of Internet service. You see, Internet traffic started out like a group of cows. At first, there were just a few cows, and a farmer would let his neighbor’s cows pass through his pasture free of charge. But now, there are more and more cows and even an occasional horse or elephant, and all that traffic is starting to get distracting. Everyone that runs their own little piece of the Internet is like that farmer. In order to accommodate the increased amount of traffic on the Internet, one farmer or a group of farmers will have to stand up and say ‘I want to build a highway that bypasses this backroads pasture stuff.’ Then, that highway will become part of the nation’s information superhighway. But if we’re going to build that highway, we have to be able to figure out how people can use it for cheap. I think we should make different classes of service available with different pay structures. What I think hasn’t been explained to [U.S. Vice President] Al Gore is we can have one class of service that is paid for by the rich, and another one that is cheap and easy to get on. We can run them in parallel.”
Biography:Daniel C. Lynch was the founder of CyberCash Inc. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Cost/Pricing
Name of publication: Telecommunications
Title, headline, chapter name: An Interview with Interop Founder Dan Lynch
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 73 ISSN: 02784831
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: McAlister, Rory