Browsing represents a form of advertising that is noninvasive and that seems to fit well with the culture of the Internet, whose users tend to be easily infuriated by electronic junk mail. “I’m convinced that very quickly we’ll have a new Madison Avenue kind of industry devoted to this style of advertising,” said Tony Rutkowski.
Predictor: Rutkowski, Anthony Michael
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for the New York Times, technology columnist John Markoff reports on the revolutionary development of Mosaic, the first World Wide Web browsing program. Markoff writes: ”Much of the Web data now available to Mosaic users is being made available by university researchers who are constructing demonstration projects to explore the technology. But commercial applications are being worked on by a wide range of corporate developers. Novell, the world’s largest developer of computer network software, has organized its technical reference literature so that any computer network user can retrieve it. Such browsing represents a form of advertising that is noninvasive and that seems to fit well with the culture of the Internet, whose users tend to be easily infuriated by electronic junk mail. ‘I’m convinced that very quickly we’ll have a new Madison Avenue kind of industry devoted to this style of advertising,’ said Tony Rutkowski, an executive at the Sprint Corporation, one of the companies whose long-distance lines provide the backbone for the Internet. Already, O’Reilly & Associates, a technical book publisher based in Sebastapol, Calif., has used Mosaic and the Web to create an on-line magazine that includes advertising. There remain, however, significant barriers to using Mosaic. It requires that the user have a computer that is directly connected to the global Internet. Many businesses and almost all universities now have such connections, but the majority of personal computer users currently connect to the Internet only indirectly through on-line information services like Delphi or America Online.”
Biography:Anthony Michael (Tony) Rutkowski was a lawyer and engineer who was an executive director of the Internet Society during some key years of development in the 1990s. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: A Free and Simple Computer Link
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Section D; Page 1; Column 3: Financial Desk
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney