To a cable company, the Net looks like thousands of channels for a couch potato to surf through. (And certainly early returns from the Web indicate that there is a market for this kind of passive infotainment, though I have my doubts about how long that stage will last.) … To a small publisher, the Net looks like an unparalleled opportunity to find and fill real user needs, to talk directly with customers and to create information products that serve them.
Predictor: O'Reilly, Tim
Prediction, in context:In a paper presented by Tim O’Reilly at INET ’95, a conference sponsored by the Internet Society in Honolulu, Hawaii, June 27-30, the publisher outlines his ideas about the future of Internet publishing: ”As businesses approach the Net, we each see it through the filter of our past experience. So perhaps: To a cable company, the Net looks like thousands of channels for a couch potato to surf through. (And certainly early returns from the Web indicate that there is a market for this kind of passive infotainment, though I have my doubts about how long that stage will last.) To a software company, the Net looks like an opportunity for an early foot in the door that leads to market dominance as users standardize on a few well-known packages. To a big media conglomerate (television, newspapers, book publishing), the Net looks like an opportunity to create ‘bestsellers’ and dominant brands. To a small publisher, the Net looks like an unparalleled opportunity to find and fill real user needs, to talk directly with customers and to create information products that serve them. Each of these models has some validity.”
Biography:Tim O’Reilly was founder and first president of O’Reilly & Associates, a computer-book-publishing company that helped popularize the Internet in the decade of the 1990s. His Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first Web portal and one of the initial commercial sites on the World Wide Web. He received InfoWorld’s Industry Achievement Award in 1998 for his advocacy on behalf of the Open Source community. He served on the board of trustees for the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: June 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: E-commerce
Name of publication: ISOC INET '95 (conference)
Title, headline, chapter name: Publishing Models for Internet Commerce
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.isoc.org/HMP/PAPER/063/html/paper.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas