Chapter 7: Electronic Bulletin Board Systems
The future looks bright for electronic bulletin board systems.
The future looks bright for electronic bulletin board systems.
Ideally, everyone who is a consumer online should have the potential to also be a provider on the network. Anyone should be able to run a Web site from their home or company. I’m pretty certain that’s not going to be an issue. Someone will try to put in the fix. But they’ll lose again. If so, this is the BBS of the future.
Everyone’s wondering what will be the ultimate format for the World Wide Web in the future. Today it’s HTML and Hot Java. But will another format come along faster than your heart beats after five cups of coffee? No one knows for certain. Whatever the new language is, Sileo predicts that everyone from mom-and-pop shops to big technology firms will need to hire a consultant to help them translate this tongue.
As an ink-stained journalist, I doubt it ever will replace the printed page, but businesspeople of all types and home users will take to the World Wide Web in increasing numbers. The Internet will be as pervasive as the air we breathe … By year’s end, it will be a permanent fixture, and you will go through withdrawals if you are on the Net every day. Surfing will give way to serious Web diving.
In the future, few cash-strapped companies will be able to pay for their execs to cavort around Resorts ‘R’ Us for the latest conference. That’s why Sileo envisions a bright future for videoconferencing organizers. As the arranger, you’d set up the equipment, coordinate the times and dates of virtual meetings, and send out minutes to attendees when it’s over.
We might say that many people believe that the information highway will be used not just for passive entertainment, but for knowledge networking. Knowledge networking is the ability to find information, when information is needed. It is the ability to send a question to thousands of people around the world who share an interest in a topic. It is the ability to send electronic mail messages to friends and business associates around the globe.
Companies will be even more confused by all the choices, including interactive TV, computers in TVs, TVs in computers, and more. And big firms – which sell through magazines, direct mail, and catalogs – will seek advice from online consultants on how to best present content for their products or services using these various mediums.
The customs of the Internet must be applied to achieve a just result. Otherwise real-world law will serve only to create uncertainty as to the legal implications of the Internet activity, which will cause the anarchic new realm of communications to route itself around the law. A better result may be achieved by identifying the limited role of law, and restricting its application to that role … The Internet will not conform to regulation; regulation must therefore conform to the Internet.
One of the great things about the Web is that small companies, big companies – everyone will have a profile on the Web, and they will have lots of ways to make money at it.
We need to go beyond literacy and computer literacy to “information literacy” … How can we take literacy to the next level so we can use it?