The Internet already is the data highway. What else is there to compete with 25 million users exchanging data? No single private company is going to build a worldwide system that can compete with it. It would cost too much money, and they’d be too far behind.
Artists can become seduced by the “bedazzlements” of computer technology, leading them to create images with more flash than feeling. “It needs to be handled with care, or else we’ll get carried away with it.”
The Web is the prototype for how people will relate by computer in the next century, and beyond. There may not be Web pages in 2010, but there will be an Internet, in one form or another.
There have to be easier answers in the future. Getting connected and getting the necessary bandwidth have to be trivially easy. I think market forces will drive this.
There will be a consolidation. The user will pay the information provider directly, not the online service. The information provider will own the subscriber list, not the people who run the network. This is the model the information provider needs to be able to engage in commerce with the user. Then the information provider has the motivation to pay the Internet operator. Without it, what motivation is there to offer any services? The Internet operators act like telephone companies; in fact, the actual telephone companies will become the Internet operators.
By exposing myself on the Web, I hope others will join me gettin’ down and groovy, shakin’ a little online booty. The potential is real, the alternative is scary. Encourage funky stuff, be willing to share of yourself with the online human collective. Be prepared to be pleasantly surprised by folks empowered by computers. With faith and vision, we will use this technology to bring people together.
Technological advances also enable new forms of illegal activity, posing new problems for legal and law-enforcement officials and challenging the very definitions of crime and civil liberties. But technologies used to combat these crimes can pose new threats to freedom and privacy.
Because you can introduce security and make the Internet a public means of doing private transactions – a public network on which you can implement private networks – it will become the de facto standard network for all electronic commerce.
Is the city hanging by its fingertips on the verge of obsolescence? … People love cities and seek them out and always will, because they love the paradox of city life: the excitement and the soothing anonymity of the big crowd. The city will never be obsolete unless and until sheer rot drives people into the countryside.
We will have peace of mind, surrounded by more soil than concrete. We can grow our food, we can revel in local art. At the same time, we can virtually attend any event, anywhere in the world. When we can travel by computer, we won’t need many cars and highways and airplanes and runways. We’ll make beautiful our communities, with planting and projects, instead of traveling to see those things in other places.