The opportunities are on the Internet, and you might be able to use it whether you make jet engines, dental tools, pipes, whatever your business is. Someone else will do it if you don’t do it soon. And if they get there first, and they do it right, you’ll never get that chance again.
“I believe in technology,” Meckler said, explaining why he feels the Internet is such an important opportunity for business. He agrees with predictions that Internet users could number 700 million or more by the year 2000. Meckler compared today’s Internet usage to the personal-computer industry of the early ’80s. “I’m thinking we’re only in 1983 or 1984 right now, comparatively. Things are moving so quickly because fledgling companies are now coming into the Internet. My philosophy is that we’re moving up very quickly to 1989, ’95, ’96. The tools we have to use right now are rudimentary. In a few years you’ll look back and laugh at how rudimentary it was.”
Turn the Internet into the main communications infrastructure for the next century. What is the main consequence to the architecture?
Needed is a specific locus of responsibility and accountability for infrastructure development and use, building on a stronger base of technological competence, within the Department of Education, and the setting of a national agenda for local, state, and federal efforts.
The federal government will never be able to invest in infrastructure facilities and services a meaningful fraction of the multibillion-dollar private-sector investment plus the growing investments by state governments in state-based information infrastructure and by all manner of individuals and organizations in local computing, communications, and information access infrastructure. What the federal government can do is focus its own investments and policymaking to gain the maximum leverage and assure the necessary balancing of interests to make sure that the public interest is met.
In the future, advertisers may also spread the word by subsidizing people’s Net usage. They may say, “Look at our ads in e-mail and we’ll give you an hour’s free online time.”
Flat-rate (subscription) charging alternatives are desirable … The commercialization of the Internet and the integration of applications into research and education suggest that related spending will inevitably be integrated into general research and education budgets, as is the case for the telephone and computing costs.
The international nature of infrastructure will have to be addressed in whatever technical, market, and legal measures are taken to assure smooth communication and interaction between most countries. International connectivity must be maintained and expanded as foreign networks develop and proliferate. Beyond physical access, one or more bodies may be needed to develop and monitor bilateral and multilateral agreements on standards, transborder data flow problems, and transborder legalities generally.
The minimum set of higher-level application services, which builds on the bearer, transport, and middleware services, includes electronic mail, fax, remote log-in, database browsing, digital-object storage, and financial-transaction services. As the NII matures, this minimum set should evolve to become more comprehensive. Beyond this minimum set are more demanding services, which include audio and video servers, both broadcast and interactive.
[An Open Data Network] is not limited to only one application, such as TV distribution. It also permits the introduction of new transmission, switching, and control technologies as these become available in the future.