Glieck on Internet

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

James Gleick in today's New York Times
(sect 4, Oct 24, 1993)


A Frontier That Is Building Itself


.... Telephone companies and cable-television companies may not be able to
keep their hands off each other, but blending our actual telephone and
televisions will surely require a lot more than F.C.C approval. The video
side of the informatlon superhighway is a one-way street and will remain so
for a long time -- even if interactlve boxes someday do let us send a few
bytes' worth of nay votes up the Iine toward Geraldo.


Yet the real information superhlghway has already taken shape, almost
behind our backs, wlth startlingly little real planning and with only the
most accidental assistance from Government policy makers and the
telecommunications companies. The global Internet -- somehow lacking a
mergers and acquisitions department, not to mention a board of directors --
has suddenly become the most universal and indispensable network on the
planet.


It's a wild frontier, befitting Its origlns -- amorphous, unruly, impolite
and anarchic. It's like a television station without programmers or a
newspaper without editors -- or rather, with millions of programmers and
editors, a lot more opinionated than polished. Like It or not, in a time
seemingly dominated by giant communications empires, the amateurs may hold
the key after all.
...