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These were selected from the 4,200
statements included in the Early '90s Predictions
Database. For more details regarding the original
publication of these quotes, use the '90s
Database Search - see link at left.
Once computer networks
become as commonplace as our national highway system, we will
learn to treat them in much the same way. Rules of the
road will emerge, and people will learn to respect them
for their own safety and for the common good. –
Katie Hafner and John Markoff, 1991
~~~
Experts are talking two
million characters
per second - a forty-fold increase in speed over current
technology. If applied to the 55-mph speed limit, it
would mean cars zooming at 2,200 miles per hour. –
Keith Epstein, 1993
~~~
Just as the development of
the Interstate Highway System led to the creation of McDonald's
hamburgers, Holiday Inn and a thousand other new
commercial developments that would have been impossible
without the Interstate Highway System, in the same way we
will see the emergence of information services on a
nationwide basis that will be extremely profitable and
nearly ubiquitous. – Al Gore, 1993
~~~
What the street used to be
to historical dandies like Brummell, Baudelaire and Wilde, the Net is to the
electronical one. Cruising along the data boulevards
cannot be prohibited and clogs the entire bandwidth in
the end. The all-too-civilized conversation during the
rendezvous stirs up some misplaced and inconvenient
information, but never leads to dissidence. Willfully
wrong navigation and elegant joy riding in somebody
else's electro-environment is targeted to trigger
admiration, jealousy and confusion, and self-assuredly
heads toward a stylized incomprehension. One fathoms the
beauty of one's virtual appearance. – Geert
Lovink, 1993
~~~
It's like trying to
predict back in 1910 the impact of the automobile on society - the
highway system, gasoline refineries, motels instead of
hotels, new dating patterns, increased social mobility,
commuting to work, the importance of the rubber industry,
smog, drive-thru restaurants, mechanized warfare, and on
and on. The net will bring more than quantitative
changes, it will bring "qualitative" changes.
Things that were impossible will now become inevitable.
– Larry Landwehr, 1993
~~~
[While the Information
Superhighway is a bad name, it could be a great acronym, standing
for] Interactive Network For Organizing, Retrieving,
Manipulating, Accessing, And Transferring Information On
National Systems, Unleashing Practically Every Rebellious
Human Intelligence, Gratifying Hackers, Wiseacres, And
Yahoos. – Kevin Kwaku, 1994
~~~
Rush-hour traffic jams,
gridlock, garish plastic-and-neon
strips, high
fatality rates, air pollution, global warming, depletion
of world oil reserves - have we forgotten all of the
interstate highway system's most familiar
consequences? Comparing the electronic and asphalt
highways is useful - but mostly as a cautionary tale.
Building the new information infrastructure will not
entail the degree of immediate, physical disruption
caused by the interstate highway system, but sweeping
geographic relocations and accompanying social
transformations seem probable. And the risk of inequity
in contriving and distributing electronic services - or
conversely imposing them where they are not wanted - is
clear. – Richard Sclove and Jeffrey Scheuer,
1994
~~~
The information
superhighway, like the Yellow Brick
Road, is the route
we must take to reach the Information Age ... Problems of
communication are in fact at the heart of the economic,
social, and political difficulties that a great many
citizens must contend with in the impoverished
communities of the United States … Our happiness
will be an illusion, artfully constructed for strategic
ends. The Yellow Brick Road cannot take me anywhere I
would like to go. The information superhighway will do no
better. – Oscar Gandy, 1994
~~~
Any future information
network will help
unhappy people secede, at least mentally, from
institutions they do not like, much as the interstate
highway system allowed the affluent to flee the cities
for the suburbs and exurbs. Prescribing mobility, whether
automotive or electronic, as an antidote to society's
fragmentation is like recommending champagne as a
hangover remedy. – Edward Tenner,
1994
~~~
The multi-billion-dollar
investments in the developing new telecommunications landscape are
driven by a simple, irresistibly tempting vision - the
prospect of converting every home and workplace in the
nation into a computerized electronic movie theater;
shopping mall; video game arcade; business, information
and financial center; and perhaps even gambling casino,
run by remote control and open all day long, every day of
the week. The information highway will not be a freeway
but an automated private toll road, traveled mostly by
those who can afford the pay the price for the wealth of
popular entertainment, information, data, communications,
and transaction services it will carry. –
Lawrence Grossman, 1995
~~~
With public-access Internet
sites, anyone with a
personal computer and a modem can become an Internet
user. This is the equivalent of being able to buy an
automobile and go driving without having to take a
driver's education course, pass a test or become
licensed ... It creates the reality of tens of thousands
of users set loose on the "Internet on-ramp"
and raring to go. These users don't necessarily do
any harm, but they can place enormous, unanticipated
loads on Internet services. – Daniel Dern,
1995
~~~
The information highway is
now, first and foremost, an advertising medium crowded with
billboards, where the pitches vary from the hard sell of
auto dealers to the soft sell of people and institutions
vying to become known by being helpful. Soon, there will
be billboard-free toll roads, and many of these will have
educational value. They will be important to education
because most useful education resources take people time
to create, operate, maintain, and update, and involve
intellectual property that often requires income reward.
Some of this time and property will be provided free by
public-spirited volunteers, foundations, and companies.
– Bob Tinker, 1995
~~~
What will be gained from
electronic information and electronic communication will
necessarily result in a loss somewhere else. If we are
not aware of this loss, and do not account for it, our
gain will be of no value. This is the lesson to be had
from the previous development of transport technologies
... But so far, traffic-control engineering on the
information (super)highways is conspicuous by its
absence. – Paul Virilio, 1995
~~~
The term
“highway” ... suggests that everyone
is driving and following the same route. This network is
more like a lot of country lanes where everyone can look
at or do whatever his individual interests suggest.
Another implication is that perhaps it should be built by
the government, which I think would be a major mistake in
most countries. But the real problem is that the metaphor
emphasizes the infrastructure of the endeavor rather than
its applications … A different metaphor that I
think comes closer to describing a lot of the activities
that will take place is that of the ultimate market.
Markets from trading floors to malls are fundamental to
human society, and I believe this new one will eventually
be the world's central department store. It will be
where we social animals, sell, trade, invest, haggle,
pick stuff up, argue, meet new people, and hang out.
– Bill Gates, 1995
~~~
Part of the
“Information
Snooperhighway.” – What the Electronic Privacy
Information Center's Marc Rotenbeg called the
Clinton-administration-backed encryption
“Clipper” chip, 1995
~~~
The bloom is off the road
... Add more
bandwidth to the backbone. Install faster fiberoptic
links. Build more file servers. Double the bandwidth, and
files zip twice as fast. A nice technical patch ... This
will cure the Internet bandwidth problem in exactly the
same way that building more highways will solve traffic
congestion. The number of bytes or cars traveling across
the continent increases. Have we learned nothing from the
past five decades of highway construction? Every roadway
has been built explicitly to lessen traffic, yet
today's traffic jams are worse than ever ... In the
same way, I doubt that adding bandwidth to the Internet
will solve future bandwidth crunches. Indeed, we'll
only find more people trolling the Net, trucking larger
files across the wires. –
Clifford Stoll, 1995
~~~
Our challenge is to
find ways of using
the Internet and World Wide Web as a mechanism for
learning for understanding, and as a mechanism for
"seeing things," not just as a highway system
for haphazard. – Kimberly Rose,
1995
~~~
I sometimes suspect that
we're seeing
something in the Internet as significant as the birth of
cities. It's something that profound and with that
sort of infinite possibilities. It's really something
new; it's a new kind of civilization. And of course
the thing I love about it is that it's transnational,
non-profit - it isn't owned by anyone - and it's
shape is completely user driven. What it is is determined
by the needs of millions and millions of users. So
cyberspace is evolving to meet the needs of individuals
all over the world. The American so-called
“Information Highway,” or the
“Infobahn” (laughs) which I have always liked
very much, is an attempt to create a commercial version.
I think that very, very large interests are looking at
the Internet, not really understanding what it is, but
thinking “We can make a fortune if we have one of
those!” You know, they want to get in there,
it'll be broadcast television again. But of course
that's not going to be it. –
William Gibson, 1995
~~~
How do we make
sure, when we're
riding down that info highway, that we don't get a
flat or become roadkill or some other ridiculous cliche?
… Here's what I think - you'll go online,
nothing really interesting will happen for one or two
years, and you'll write off interactivity as a
failure … There isn't a single gold-paved road
to success in this new environment. There is no road map
or users manual. It's not something you can research.
And there is nothing to be gained by forcing new
opportunities into the boxes of past experience. What we
need to do is slow down. To relax. –
Barry Diller, 1995
~~~
And a bit of humor from the
Electronic Frontier Foundation site:
The Top Ten Anagrams for
“Information Superhighway”:
10. Enormous, hairy pig with
fan
9. Hey, ignoramus - win profit? Ha!
8. Oh-oh, wiring snafu: empty air
7. When forming, utopia's hairy
6. A rough whimper of insanity
5. Oh, wormy infuriating phase
4. Inspire humanity, who go far
3. Waiting for any promise, huh?
2. Hi-ho! Yow! I'm surfing Arpanet!
And the number one anagram for
"Information Superhighway":
1. New utopia? Horrifying
sham
-Author unknown,
1995
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