We already have one product category, encyclopedias, that is selling better in hypermedia form than in paper form. I would expect a few more such product categories to appear, but I would expect most product categories to be dominated by traditional media in the short term. One product category that is a prime candidate for initial multimedia dominance is movie guides.
I expect to see three major changes: the consolidation of the mass market for hypertext; commercial information services on the Internet; the integration of hypertext and other computer facilities.
In another five to 10 years a fundamental change will happen in the world of computing and that integrated object-oriented systems will take over. This will happen slowly, though, because the current generation of Great Applications is powerful indeed. It will take some time for the smaller, more agile mammals – sorry, modules – to win.
I wish there were people in the Electronic Frontier whose moral integrity unquestionably matched the unleashed power of those digital machines … The future is a dark road and our speed is headlong.
Successful online communications inevitably lead to more face-to-face interaction. I’m a lot more interested in the personal information and personal communications of the Net than all the hoo-hah about commerce and entertainment.
There’s something direly mean spirited and ungenerous about inventing a language and then renting it out to other people to speak. There’s something unprecedented and sinister in this process of creeping commodification of data and knowledge. A computer is something too close to the human brain for me to rest entirely content with someone patenting or copyrighting the process of its thought … I don’t think democracy will thrive in a milieu where vast empires of data are encrypted, restricted, proprietary, confidential, top-secret, and sensitive. I fear for the stability of a society that builds sand castles out of databits and tries to stop a real-world tide with royal commands.
People living in the midst of technological revolution are living outside the law: not necessarily because they mean to break laws, but because the laws are vague, obsolete, overbroad, draconian, or unenforceable.
In my own best-case scenario, every elementary and high school teacher in the United States of America will have unlimited and absolutely cost-free professional access to long-distance telephone service. The provision of this service could be made, by law, a basic operation requirement for all telephone companies. Of course, this would also apply to cable television. By the same token, every teacher in every American public school will be provided, by the manufacturer, on demand, and at no cost, with copies of any piece of software.
The true discourse, Socrates says, is that which is inscribed in men’s souls and is delivered through speech. What Socrates disparages in writing is exactly what critics of electronic media hope to defend from the further technologizing of rhetoric … It is possible that MOO is the forerunner of technology that will provide the sort of structured environment needed for the “common place” of civilized society. If so, we would have a median between the oral and literate extremes.
According to International Data Corp., a market research firm in Framingham, Mass., about 8.3 million people will be using the Web by year-end. Of that group, IDC estimates that an amazing 75 percent are using Netscape’s software. And as more of the 57 million users of the broader Internet move onto the Web, Netscape’s market will keep growing.