Information Highway Has Litter Problem
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 It could stay on the network until it is five years out of date.
Topic: Community/Culture
Perils Await the Unwary on the Cyber-Frontier
“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.”
Fast Growth Spells Trouble for Internet Traditionalists
With the 4 million people using national services such as America Online and an estimated 17 million bulletin board system (BBS) users nationwide slowly being introduced to the Internet, that spells potential disaster for traditionalists, said Jack Rickard, editor of the magazine Boardwatch.
The Internet and Interactive Television
When somebody can put an ftp-server/BBS on the Internet for a couple thousand dollars, it will certainly change the network.
Don’t Blame Me!
The WWW is OK, but eventually people get bored (it’s the old ViewData problem: nobody wants to view data!). What people need is interaction with other people, and that’s what MUDs give them.
Don’t Blame Me!
If the commercial companies eschew text in favor of graphics, people who excel at writing text MUDs will not be able to get jobs doing it. Result: no professional-quality text MUDs. Eventually, this can only lead to the marginalization of amateur MUDs, which will be labelled as the haunts of weirdoes and social inadequates, ignored by the mainstream. OK, so it might not happen – but it might! And if it does, don’t blame me!
A Rapid Response
If I remove “rape” because it added nothing to MUD, then logically I should remove “kiss” and “smile” and so on, too. Maybe I should?
Accurate technology Predictions
[We expect] the rapid growth of knowledge-sharing electronic communities.
Cyberspace 2020
Historians of the future – provided good dreams prevail – will view this [development] as having been far more crucial to the survival of democracy in the United States than rural electrification or the space program … Access to cyberspace may well represent nothing less than this nation’s last and best hope of providing something like a level socio-economic playing field for a true majority of its citizens.
Here’s Where Woodstock Meets Silicon Valley
Computers will no longer be a place to hide from girls or zits or lack of social skills, as it was for many of us.