We still have another factor of a hundred or so to go to adhere to the projection [for the Internet]. We need probably another factor of a thousand to do the kind of things [we expect] for Internet-3 … I don’t think we’ll have relative [fully functioning video] for awhile, but … they’re going to know you’re a dog if you’re on Internet.
Predictor: Bell, Gordon
Prediction, in context:In the keynote speech at InternetWorld 1995, pioneering computer scientist Gordon Bell, formerly of Digital Equipment Corporation and then a research leader at Microsoft, tells of his vision of the next version of the Internet – Internet-3 – saying: ”What you get with a very fat pipe is not the ability to send bogus data and pictures or video, but you get the ability for a lot of people to send a lot of small messages and get them instantaneously. This is what makes Internet 2.0 work in 1995. We still have another factor of a hundred or so to go to adhere to the projection [for the Internet]. We need probably another factor of a thousand to do the kind of things [we expect] for Internet-3. The optical gigabit links called for research, all these others were more straight-forward. The Internet Task Force worked very hard. And Internet is the most impressive engineering I know, but [it is] what might be called chaotic engineering. I think its the greatest network engineering that’s come down the pike … graphics allow us to do the billboards and catalogs, to have the bit warehouses for text to simple images and a new one, RealAudio. I don’t think we’ll have relative [fully functioning video] for awhile, but we’ve got Cornell’s CU SeeMe, and the tragedy is that now they’re going to know you’re a dog if you’re on Internet [reference to a popular cartoon at the time in which two dogs are facing beside a computer and one is saying to the other ‘On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog’].”
Biography:Gordon Bell proposed a plan for a U.S. research and education network in a 1987 report to the Office of Science and Technology in response to a congressional request by Al Gore. He was a technology leader at Digital Equipment Corporation (where he led the development of the VAX computer) and with Microsoft. (Technology Developer/Administrator)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: InternetWorld 1995 Conference
Title, headline, chapter name: It’s Bandwidth and Symmetry, Stupid!
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/IntWorld/tsld002.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney