In 1994, Bill Gates said the Web revolution would be bigger than the PC revolution, and the most successful companies in it wouldnÕt even have been heard of yet, Java, Netscape, amazon.com Рnone of them were around back in 1994.
Internet communities tend to ignore inappropriate laws and make their own on an ad hoc basis … Users are going to make the policies on the IH … As for the content of both TV and the Internet, the control over pornography and violence will ultimately be in the home. Parents will have to take more responsibility as to what their children view.
Computers were feared, would be the Big Brother’s tool, instruments of oppression, invaders of privacy, displacers of persons. All those dangers are still with us, and all those fears. The use of bar codes and scanners poses great challenges to a free society. But up until now, at least, computers have shown themselves to be capable of empowering people in ways we did not foresee 20 years ago.
Our new telegraph has just been invented but is not yet widely deployed. The big deployment, begun with tools like Mosaic in a Box, will become nearly universal … The Internet will be the mainstream interactive disseminator of information. At least until the equivalent of the telegraph’s replacement comes along … We’re only getting an inkling of what’s to come.
The number of kids in cyberspace will continue to grow, and with it, the sort of often-juvenile, boundary-testing communications once limited to notes passed between students in class.
Today we have the Net, the last accidentally uncensored mass medium in existence. Is it a toy of the rich and the ivory tower, or is it potent? … Will we allow ourselves to be possessed by the vision of a Net whose purpose is to help create and support HEROES? Or will we dismiss it all with a keystroke and get back to the REAL FUN STUFF on alt.flame.Joe.schmuck.the.world’s.greatest.poophead?
Want to lose your shirt? Bet against the Internet … Because its architecture ensures that it cannot be easily controlled by the government, it will become the primary source of information for Joe Couchpotato. The printed newspaper and magazine will be forced to find new roles as radio did when TV took over as the primary source of entertainment.
My problem with painting this undefined thing someplace in the future is you end up waiting for this nirvana instead of following the evolutionary process that is happening today.
A large portion of [networked communications] prophecy relates to virtual reality (VR) technology, which promises all flavors of reality on demand. Some of it is associated with the combination of audio and video in the computer which is to lead us to the long-promised connection between the radio, television and computer. But increasingly there are fewer comments about the wonders of technology and more about the new forms of community brought about by CMC.
Once we can surmount time and space and “be” anywhere, we must choose a “where” at which to be, and the computer’s functionality lies in its power to make us organize our decisions about the places we visit and stay in.