Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

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

By the end of the year … the total number of users on the Internet is going to be as big as cable. U.S. cable serves 60 million homes; we’re currently at 25 million Internet users. By the end of the year, that will be 50 million. By the middle of next year, you’ll be over and above what U.S. cable operations touch.

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

When the phone system was invented it was primarily for voice. We commercialized it when we began to use it for business, and we commercialized it further when we began to do data transfers over the wire, money transfers over telephone lines. It’s exactly the same thing. Commercialization of the Internet is as inevitable as the sun coming up tomorrow.

Billions Registered: Right Now, There Are No Rules to Keep You From Owning a Bitchin’ Corporate Name as Your Own Internet Address

How much do you think mcdonalds.com is worth? What could you sell mtv.com for? Is there gold in them thar domains, as a lot of people seem to think, or is it just fool’s gold? No one knows the answers to these questions … It’s easy to find an unused domain name, and so far, there are no rules that would prohibit you from owning a bitchin’ corporate name, trademarked or not.

Watching the Detectives

With error margins of less than a centimeter, they will be able to create computer-generated playbacks of performances … Single-chip, coin-sized versions of their units will be made cheaply enough for each officer to wear several on their uniforms and equipment – wrists, elbows, ankles, knees, heads, torsos, hips, guns, nightsticks. An officer’s every move will be captured … With such a recording, many crucial questions can be answered. Did the officer violate department policy by clubbing a suspect with an overhand blow to the head? Did she shoot someone who was already wounded on the ground? … Technology may yet prove to be the best way to guard the guards themselves.

Watching the Detectives

What if it were possible to have a fair witness next to every policeman in the world? What if that fair witness were a machine? We may live in the digital age, but police have not generally availed themselves of the most modern equipment available. Some civil libertarians might call this is a good thing, arguing that arming cops with advanced technology, especially for surveillance, only gives them new ways to abuse our rights. Another viewpoint, however, welcomes at least some high-tech police tools, especially those with two-way capacity. Properly deployed, a suite of high-tech devices can be our electronic fair witness to catch the bad cops red-handed and protect the good ones from false accusations.

Power to the People: The Clinton Administration is Using the Net in a Pitched Effort to Perform an End Run Around the Media

A natural-language system that can automatically extract the substance of incoming e-mail and build a representation of the knowledge contained in the texts … might keep track of opinions and discussions within electronic communities – allowing people to find and connect with like-minded individuals around the world. They might also help mediate between viewpoints and move debates toward consensus … In the end much of human culture will be accessible online, resulting in … a new “electronic Zeitgeist.”