Professional pointing and searching services are going to be increasingly important. Universal active knowledge, interfaces through such things as telescript agents produced by General Magic will be increasingly important.
A modem, a PC, and the intent to destabilize might prove a more serious threat to the established order than any military invasion.
I think the Internet will be the universal open interface amongst any kind of a device with a computer in it. I think things like the World Wide Web, browsers and Java will be the universal open navigation and application interface.
The evolution of computer and networking technology can be seen as a progression toward more user-friendly interfaces that encourage hypertext-style participation of both the computer illiterate and those who wish to interact more intimately in Cyberia than can be experienced by typing on a keyboard … This has all changed again with the development of virtual reality, the computer interface that promises to bring us into the matrix – mind, body, and soul.
The danger of participation is that there are hundreds or even thousands of potentially critical eyes watching every entry. A faulty fact will be challenged, a lie will be uncovered, plagiarism will be discovered. Cyberspace is a truth serum.
When the entire procession of historical, biological, and cosmological events is reanalyzed in the light of modern mathematical discoveries like the fractal and feedback loops, it points toward this era – the turn of the century – as man’s leap out of history altogether and into the timeless dimension of Cyberia.
We will be free (within limits) to put on and take off various personae. We will, of course, need to rethink basic questions about authenticity, identity and responsibility, in this context.
We will eventually figure out how to allow groups of people to form, run and own new corporate entities by means of action taken entirely through the Net. These new electronic corporations will be allowed to own property and take action in the real world on behalf of their owner/managers. They will be legal persons. And they will change the very nature of human collaboration.
As it becomes possible for individuals and small groups to have a greater impact on the world via the Net, there will be pressures for more regulation of those activities. And, where regulation is feasible and much desired by some interests, there will be an intensification of jurisdictional disputes.
The Net will become more important to more people, as they use it for business and increasingly important personal transactions. This will make disputes over access rights and exclusion much more likely.