We’re accustomed to communication links being the bottleneck; soon it will be the switching system itself. In the next decade, network traffic jams will be caused as much by the interchanges as by the thoroughfares. If every user expects the kind of service being touted by today’s Internet hustlers, a gigabyte-per-second bandwidth won’t be enough.
Predictor: Stoll, Clifford
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Silicon Snake Oil,” writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the Internet’s future implications: ”There are limits to how fast you can move data. Even if you create superfast links, the speeds of the trunk lines will exceed the speeds of the switches. A computer must read the destination address of every packet whenever it reaches a node. With a dozen or more nodes between me and you, this switching delay limits how fast data travels. We’re accustomed to communication links being the bottleneck; soon it will be the switching system itself. In the next decade, network traffic jams will be caused as much by the interchanges as by the thoroughfares. If every user expects the kind of service being touted by today’s Internet hustlers, a gigabyte-per-second bandwidth won’t be enough.”
Biography:Clifford Stoll was an astrophysicist who also wrote the influential books “Silicon Snake Oil” (1995) and “The Cuckoo’s Egg.” A long-time network user, Stoll made “Silicon Snake Oil” his platform for finding fault with the Internet hype of the early 1990s. He pointed out the pitfalls of a completely networked society and offered arguments in opposition to the hype. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Pipeline/Switching/Hardware
Name of publication: Silicon Snake Oil
Title, headline, chapter name: Wherein the Author Considers the Future of the Library, the Myth of Free Information, and a Novel Way to Heat Bathwater
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 208
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Tencer, Elizabeth L.