We hope to hasten the day when a student in his living room can browse through the electronic index of the Library of Congress, retrieve a specific document and have it printed on his laser printer, within the space of minutes.
Xanadu’s software will let users create and manage all their documents and show connections between them in ways that conventional database programs can’t. A user could not only see the current version of a legal contract, for example, but instantly compare it with all previous versions. More remarkable still, users will be able to compare voluminous collections of diagrams and architectural drawings for their similarities and differences.
The physical network, including fiber-optic lines and high-capacity switches will be deployed, owned and maintained by the private sector.
We’re groping for a way to use the Net in a way where information will flow freely and people can still make money. The hackers are going to help us find ways to have a more humanized system of commerce.
Unfortunately Tim Berners-Lee forgot to make an expiry date compulsory. It means that any information can just be left and forgotten. It could stay on the network until it is five years out of date.
“As information becomes cheap, learning what not to read or connect to becomes more valuable,” … what becomes important are what Kelly calls “the technologies of disconnection” – the search tools, filters and digesters that refine and manage data. As information becomes like air – everywhere and free the value will be how it is processed. There will be more unlisted numbers and e-mail addresses, according to Kelly. “And more people will subscribe to small information salons rather than cosmopolitan services like CompuServe.”
“When you hand a waiter your credit card, he could walk out the back and run it through three times,” he says, yet most people take security for granted. Thanks to new encryption methods and hardware “firewalls,” he says, the Net can be made evey safer than standard transaction methods. For now, Chalk refuses to say that the Internet is the best thing going. “It’s going to be the best thing going.”
Electronic communication will be the fabric of tommorow’s society, and we will have daily interaction with intimates that we can only rarely afford to visit in person. By codifying the government’s power to spy invisibly on these contacts, we take a giant step toward a world in which privacy belongs only to the wealthy, the powerful, and, perhaps, the criminals.
By decade’s end, Chalk expects 5 percent of all retail purchases will be made online. Buyers now trust the Net only for basic price-driven purchases, such as CDs or computer parts. But long-term, Chalk foresees huge choice: “Everything right down to cars, because the information available will be so incredible.”
The computer will increasingly replace the commuter.