[ih] Internet-history Digest, Vol 10, Issue 1

[John Gilmore]

> I answered him that thirty years of the internet has been a spectacular
> time of development. Can you imagine the word fighting the COVID-19
> pandemic without the internet? If there were no internet, there could be
> very little working from home, no online classes for students stuck at
> home, no video communication with family and friends, much more loneliness,

In 1992 John Perry Barlow called for "connecting every mind to every
other mind in full-duplex broadband. ... The creation of ... a
ubiquitous digital web, [for] ... telephone service, e-mail, software,
faxes, ... 'video postcards', and, in time, High Definition Television
as well as other media as yet barely imagined."  He called it The Great
Work.  See:

  https://www.eff.org/pages/complete-acm-columns-collection#greatwork

So ok, we built that!  What now?  Who has a vision for what it'll
be like 30 years from today?

"What thoughts will all this assembled neurology, silicon, and optical
fiber think?"

	John

PS:
> no way to stop rumors and get scientific information to ordinary people,

There were plenty of pre-Internet ways to stop rumors and get
information to ordinary people.  Consider AM radio.  And tiny numbers of
television networks (3 in the US, 1 in many countries).  Shortwave
receivers.  Magazines, newspapers, libraries, conferences, postal
letters, phone calls.  Oh yes, *books*.  Literacy.  Reading, writing
and arithmetic.