Idiot’s Guide to the Net: From Boston’s Cyberbars to Siena’s Schoolrooms, Some of the Frequently Asked Questions About the Network that Connects Us All

[The Internet is] a fundamental transformation, [a] robust global mesh [of computers that allows] open collaboration in the hyperdevelopment and evolution of new technologies [and one that will] transform the structure, methods and individual skills within enterprises, institutions and professions of all kinds … A hundred years from now, history may well record the emergence and implementation of the Internet protocol as a profound turning point in the evolution of human communication – of much greater significance than the creation of the printing press.

Idiot’s Guide to the Net: From Boston’s Cyberbars to Siena’s Schoolrooms, Some of the Frequently Asked Questions About the Network that Connects Us All

In this vision, the Net is thoroughly commercialized, produced by professionals, and carries a charge, or advertising or both. Publishing information on the Internet becomes so expensive that free or nearly free access to it by individuals almost ceases to exist.

Idiot’s Guide to the Net: From Boston’s Cyberbars to Siena’s Schoolrooms, Some of the Frequently Asked Questions About the Network that Connects Us All

The price of everything falls so rapidly and the efficiencies of the architecture are so great that the technology needed to use the Internet becomes nearly free. Large commercial enterprises keep to their own cybermalls, leaving the rest of cyberspace unpaved. A free-floating cybercash economy develops which has no connection with the Earth-bound banking system. The Internet evolves as a self-organizing, smoothly functioning anarchy. This is an extreme that has elements of the plausible.

Idiot’s Guide to the Net: From Boston’s Cyberbars to Siena’s Schoolrooms, Some of the Frequently Asked Questions About the Network that Connects Us All

I believe the Web will represent a half of all Internet traffic by the beginning of 1996 because it is the easiest and preferred way of presenting information, either for free or for sale.

The Year of the Internet

In the next 12 months, you’ll be hearing plenty about “hot” Web pages, blazingly fast cable modems, $500 Internet terminals and cyberspace coverage of the presidential election. No matter that most people in the United States have yet to log on, let alone Net-surf. In 1996, maybe they will.

The Year of the Internet

I have heard people say the hype can’t last. But so far if you were to bet on that point of view you would have lost all your money. There are stakeholders in the Internet. They fix the problems. The bandwidth isn’t wide enough, we give more. If government tries to stop it, the Net reconnects around (borders).

The Year of the Internet

The Net will include TV, radio, all the cash-register data in the world, every traffic sensor in the world. It won’t be just people talking to each other. It will be people talking to machines, and machines talking to each other.

The Year of the Internet

Whole industries might go away, particularly those involved in modes of distribution that will evaporate when businesses can send the same materials direct to customers over the Net. New sorts of ventures will certainly emerge, but we can’t be sure what they’ll be.

The Year of the Internet

In the long run, it’s hard to exaggerate the importance of the Internet. It really is about opening communications to the masses.