Re: IoT - The end of the internet

[Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>]

LOL! You’re not the first person to underestimate the resilience of the Internet:


“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olsen, CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation (now 
defunct), 1977


"I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years," Bill Gates Comdex 1994.


27 February 1995, Newsweek magazine, quoting astronomer Clifford Stoll:

“The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher 
and no computer network will change the way government works. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on 
disc.  Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers 
straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”

(17 years later, Newsweek ceased print publication and became exclusively available online).


Robert Metcalfe, InfoWorld columnist and the inventor of Ethernet, also in 1995:

 “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.”


Clifford Stoll 1998: “We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline 
tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So 
how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?”


Of course, it’s not all cake and roses:


“Two years from now, spam will be solved.” – Bill Gates (2004)


 -mel

On Aug 9, 2022, at 7:24 PM, Christopher Wolff <chris () vergeinternet com> wrote:

Hi folks,

Has anyone proposed that the adoption of billions of IoT devices will ultimately ‘break’ the Internet?

It’s not a rhetorical question I promise, just looking for a journal or other scholarly article that implies that the 
Internet is doomed.