With millions of users posting messages to the network, the valuable gets lost in the dross … With everyone able to upload their works to the network, the Internet begins to resemble publisher’s slush piles. It’s up to the reader to separate out the dregs. What’s missing from the network are genuine editors.
Combined with the latest Internet browsers, the World Wide Web promises to make the Internet a comfortable environment for everyone, including computer-phobic people.
And, in the future when we deal with increasing numbers of users, wireless could in turn become the preferred medium … Conceptually this removes the constraints of being like the dog whose freedom of action is limited by the length of his leash.
We’re protected against this kind of database correlation by deep incompatibilities between different computer systems … I suspect Big Brother won’t have an easy time tracing us. Many important computers will forever be off-net. Most have such weird data structures that it’s just not worth the effort to correlate with other databases. And untrustworthy information pervades the system. Our privacy will be protected, as it always has been, by simple obscurity and the high cost of uncovering information about us.
Our particular concern is that well-meaning government administrators, responsible for control of the radio spectrum space, are making seemingly innocent decisions that could have disastrous unforeseen consequences. It could even cause our networks of the future to be unnecessarily expensive and less capable than if a wider appreciation of what’s really happening was better understood.
In the next five years, having a link to the Internet will become as common as having a telephone number or a mailbox.
Wireless has a major potential role to play in the last 100 meters of network systems by allowing rapid easy interconnection without a jumble of wires.
There’s good reason to keep records on paper – it’s the one medium that never goes out of style. And as governments provide their information online, those who are wired to the Net will continue to become more powerful, those without modems will become even more disenfranchised.
Do we need all the regulation where each slice of frequency in each geographical area is tightly controlled by Washington? Or might we be better off if we used the Internet as our model? No central node. Local decision control with a minimum of restrictions.
Electronic referenda on current events would further shorten the event horizon for public policy. Instead of political changes every few years, policies would be voted on every few months. This is hardly the path to long-term planning. The electronic constituency would be a most fickle electorate.