You’ll be able to have applications sitting there on your desktop that are talking to Netscape and are using it to do certain things, so I think that’s certainly a near-term route to pretty close integration. In the long term, I think it makes sense to start expanding the two-way communication mechanisms in the browser.
Traditional as well as new corporate applications will be delivered to end users via the World Wide Web – that is the future.
It seems that [George Gilder’s] theory of a “central” network and a “peripheral” PC may be on its way to becoming a reality.
Financial activities would probably consume a large part of the NII. With an infrastructure in place, companies could smoothly conduct all sorts of financial inquiries and transactions with customers, suppliers and banks. The electronic data interchange, or EDI – a standard for financial transactions now being developed – would be an important NII convention.
Gilder’s fantasy of a Microsoft-free computer industry might come to pass if Bill Gates spent his time in his vault counting his money. He doesn’t. He obsessively watches the horizon for threats to his hegemony. When he spots a danger, he works feverishly to use his current monopolies to leverage his way into the new arena.
The PC will become a peripheral attached to an all-knowing, all-powerful Internet [?] I don’t think so, George. Not that the Internet won’t be important; I look at it as one of the most important applications that will be used on my PC in the future.
Hardware and operating systems will become subordinate to the network; … the network will, in effect, become everything and the only thing.
Anticipating the inevitable linking of the world’s NIIs, we might someday bring into our homes the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Athens Archaeological Museum, with the ability to tailor the offerings of these grand institutions to our personal needs and interests.
What industries badly need is a universal way to communicate documents across a wide variety of machine configurations, operating systems and communication networks. These documents should be viewable on any display and should be printable on any modern printers. If this problem can be solved, then the fundamental way people work will change.
I don’t doubt that the next Gates will eventually appear, and the Internet may fuel her rise, but it’s one hell of a tough act to follow.