Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Interview with Berners-Lee

I hope that the concept of the Web as an information space independent of hardware type and location will continue to exist … I hope we will be smart enough to allow this evolution and never have to suddenly stop, put a “7” in front of all the URIs, and call it something else.

CMC Characteristics

The discourse in these computer-mediated forums exhibits many qualities of an oral culture. The existence of this text-based orality may imply that discourse need not be based upon sound in order to have oral characteristics. Rather … oral characteristics grow out of computer-mediated communication which gives participants greater independence over time and space than paper-based text communication … Just as the earlier technologies (the Greek alphabet, the printing press) changed the way people communicated and thought, so, too, does CMC.

Interview with Berners-Lee

Integrating real-time data such as video conferences should be easy, when we have the real-time protocols and the bandwidth. Collaboration involves much easier editing of hypertext, simultaneous editing, and hooking in groupware, which is much like hooking in video.

Interview with Berners-Lee

The interesting thing is that while on the one hand I would like a single-user interface metaphor for all these things, on the other hand one sees that at the lower levels of NNTTP, SMTP and HTTP the protocols also will grow to look more like others, as HTTP uses caching to distribute much-read documents in a self-organizing way which if taken to the limit becomes the flooding of NNTP. So the boundaries will I suspect disappear at all levels.

Interview with Berners-Lee

If it’s good people, people will want to buy it, and money is the way they vote on what they want. I believe that system is the best one we have, so if it’s right, sure people are going to make money. People will make money building software, selling information, and more importantly doing all kinds of “real” business which happens to work much better because the Web is there to make their work easier.

A Plain Text on Cryto Policy

In secret, they are making for us what may be the most important choice that has ever faced American democracy, that is, whether our descendants will lead their private lives with unprecedented mobility and safety from coercion, or whether every move they make, geographic, economic, or amorous, will be visible to anyone who possesses whatever may then constitute “lawful authority.”

A Plain Text on Crypto Policy

No one would be driven to use [The Clipper Chip] by anything but convenience. In fact, no one with any brains would use it if he were trying to get away with anything.