The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface | Imagining the Internet

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

The goal is referential integration. You’ve got all these people, and people are cultural – the individual has cultural software that he is running. As that culture is expressed electronically, you can integrate it into the Web. You can build a knowledge base that can draw on the experience of not just the individual or a limited group, but a whole country or planet … The Web is destined to become not only omnipresent, but also, in a sense, omniscient.

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

Different computers on the Web [will share] data in such a way that the most popular information is replicated onto many machines, while the least popular information lives on a single machine. Addresses, in the conventional sense, would disappear. No human being would know where any specific piece of information was stored. The Web would shift its data around automatically, while users could retrieve documents simply by knowing their names. The Web, in this scheme, becomes unlocatable and omnipresent.

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

Mosaic could become the standard front end to the Net, a universal gateway to the entire stream of digital information … The momentum toward a global data environment will create an insatiable demand for Mosaic Communications’s proprietary browser. Mosaic, in this scenario, is the DOS/Windows of cyberspace, an achievement that would make its young creators the new millennium’s first computer zillionaires.

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

[Mosaic] has begun a revolution in the way we experience knowledge. In the world of the Web, knowledge is not something you produce, but something you participate in. A document isn’t a self-sufficient individual creation, but a perspective, or collection of perspectives, on the entire Web.

The (Second Phase of the) Revolution Has Begun: Don’t Look Now, But Prodigy, AOL, and CompuServe Are All Suddenly Obsolete – and Mosaic is Well on its Way to Becoming the World’s Standard Interface

Mosaic is about to get a boot up the backside … There are an awful lot of good browsers coming out. Mosaic isn’t the only one.

Why Jim Clark Loves Mosaic: After Leaving Silicon Graphics, Jim Clark Wanted to Get Into the Interactive-Television Business, But Wasn’t Sure Where the Next Fire Would Strike. With Mosaic, Clark Thinks He Has Found the Spark

The Internet is a protocol running on top of a physical connection network. That underlying physical network can be changed and the protocol can still be called the Internet. As the underlying physical network changes, all of these applications you develop for the Internet port right over there … It’s a game, and we’re going to build a business around it.

Why Jim Clark Loves Mosaic: After Leaving Silicon Graphics, Jim Clark Wanted to Get Into the Interactive-Television Business, But Wasn’t Sure Where the Next Fire Would Strike. With Mosaic, Clark Thinks He Has Found the Spark

Even a nonliterate person will be able to use what the PC becomes, because when you remove the keyboard and put a big display on it, you have television, but you also have computing … Those things you traditionally associate with each medium are going to come together, and I think they’re going to come together with the center of gravity around computing, not around the old television technology … The rate at which cable can change the installed plant doesn’t compare to the rate at which computing technology is going to become a television.

Why Jim Clark Loves Mosaic: After Leaving Silicon Graphics, Jim Clark Wanted to Get Into the Interactive-Television Business, But Wasn’t Sure Where the Next Fire Would Strike. With Mosaic, Clark Thinks He Has Found the Spark

What you call a computer today will mutate. A stripped-down version of today’s computer will be used as an interface to a television … And now the ordinary consumer says, Well it’s a better-looking picture, and I’ve got this different remote, and I can point to things on the screen, and it’s a higher-quality picture. But I can watch movies and see video – ordinary television.