The concept of performance will expand to include most of the information economy, from multicasted soap operas to stock analysis. In these instances, commercial exchange will be more like ticket sales to a continuous show than the purchase of discrete bundles of that which is being shown.
The “terrain” itself – the architecture of the Net – may come to serve many of the purposes which could only be maintained in the past by legal imposition. For example, it may be unnecessary to constitutionally assure freedom of expression in an environment which, in the words of my fellow EFF co-founder John Gilmore, “treats censorship as a malfunction” and reroutes proscribed ideas around it.
Soon most information will be generated collaboratively by the cyber-tribal hunter-gatherers of cyberspace. Our arrogant dismissal of the rights of “primitives” will soon return to haunt us.
Faith in law will not be an effective strategy for high-tech companies. Law adapts by continuous increments and at a pace second only to geology. Technology advances in lunging jerks, like the punctuation of biological evolution grotesquely accelerated. Real-world conditions will continue to change at a blinding pace, and the law will lag further behind, more profoundly confused.
Humanity now seems bent on creating a world economy primarily based on goods that take no material form. In doing so, we may be eliminating any predictable connection between creators and a fair reward for the utility or pleasure others may find in their works. Without that connection, and without a fundamental change in consciousness to accommodate its loss, we are building our future on furor, litigation, and institutionalized evasion of payment except in response to raw force. We may return to the Bad Old Days of property.
As the ’90s proceed, finding a link to the Internet will become much cheaper and easier. Its ease of use will also improve, which is fine news, for the savage UNIX interface of TCP/IP leaves plenty of room for advancements in user-friendliness. Learning the Internet now, or at least learning about it, is wise. By the turn of the century, “network literacy,” like “computer literacy” before it, will be forcing itself into the very texture of your life.
Computer networks worldwide will feature 3-D animated graphics, radio and cellular phone-links to portable computers, as well as fax, voice, and high-definition television. A multimedia global circus! Or so it’s hoped – and planned. The real Internet of the future may bear very little resemblance to today’s plans. Planning has never seemed to have much to do with the seething, fungal development of the Internet. After all, today’s Internet bears little resemblance to those original grim plans for RAND’s post-holocaust command grid. It’s a fine and happy irony.
It will have a negative effect on individual freedom and liberty. It might even encourage contempt for law enforcement on the digital network, since strong cryptographic algorithms are already available in software, freely reproducible by all who desire, regardless of where they live or work.
[The Netscape-Java union will] invert the entire world of software in a way that may permanently displace Microsoft from the center of the sphere.
When we saw the Internet coming in the spring of 1994, we decided to abandon all the things we were trying to do with Java and focus on applying it to the Net. Supercharging browsers became our new mission … Netscape is really important to our strategy, so we are going to help it become successful, and they are going to do the same for us.