|
|
The Top 20
‘Information Highway’
Quotes of 1990-1995
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
|
|