WWWhither(ing) Internet

by Lee Damon
<[email protected]>

Lee (a.k.a. nomad) has run castle.org since 1982. He is a senior systems administrator for a San Diego-based R&D company, and is never afraid to share his opinions about computing (and he doubts that his employer would wish to claim them).

Everyone's using them now. They're everywhere. Companies put them in their commercials. Kids compare them in class. Nerds (note the e) think they're k00l because they "own" one. It seems that URLs are taking over.

It's the fad of the decade: "My address is http://. . . ." Web hosting companies are the Video stores of the 90s. Looking for a quick buck? Start an ISP, or better yet, just dedicate your company to Web hosting. (Who needs to deal with all those pesky modems? There's no money in that.) Anyone with a PC and some disk space can get into the act. Toss in an ISDN connection, or a frame relay line, and you're in business. BSD/OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux all have tuning to help Web services run faster. Even NT is getting into the act, and some brave folks (fools?) make the effort with win95.

Organizations like Prodigy, Netcom, AOL, Joe's ISP, and CompuServe make fortunes off "the Web." Free data they can sell to their customers! What better formula is there for getting rich? Install a link to the Internet at, oh, maybe $6,000/mo., and make $600,000/mo. Subtract a few dollars to pay for a small (overworked and understaffed) "customer support" group to answer questions like "what's a modem?" and the rest can go directly into your shareholders' pockets.

No real development costs, no paying nasty things like royalties to the people who invented the technology to make it possible. What venture-capitalist bliss.

You see URLs at the end of TV commercials, hear them in radio spots, find them splattered all over billboards and magazine/newspaper adds. Any company that's anyone has a Web page . . . or two . . . or three. Or a dozen. Want to sell your trinket? Looking for that perfect job applicant? Want to tell the world about your god(s)/goddess(es)? Plan to chase UFOs? Get a Web page and watch the hit rate climb. Not happy with your hit count? Put the word "sex" in your page, or pay Yahoo or AltaVista (or any number of other locators) and get your entry moved to the top of the list.

Lots of people have them too. At times it seems like you can't converse with anyone who doesn't have a Web page. It's self-publishing for the masses. Anyone with a message can publish on the Web. Mass communication at it's proverbial best ­ or worst. Just how many shrines to Elvis does this world need?

Everyone's surfin'. People spend hours, even days, just surfin' the Web. It has replaced TV in some households. The new refuge for the couch potato. Replace the remote with a mouse, and you have millions if not billions of things to stare at. Of course, the most popular pages are the ones that sell sex. At least those couch potatoes have healthy (?) libidos. (Though it gives one pause, I'll not follow that line of thought any further.)

Perhaps the saddest cut of all is that all these new, lost users keep thinking The Web is The Internet.

As with previous fads that made people rich, CB radio in the 70s, video stores, and object-oriented code in the 80s, this one will eventually saturate. People will tire of looking at the latest pictures of their neighbor's newborn, or reading about Uncle Fred's Caribbean vacation, or hearing Joe's latest story about cat fungus. They'll put the computer aside, switch off the modem, and move on to the next thing to grab the public's fancy.

Maybe the modem will be turned back on when Jimmy needs to do some research on his paper about dinosaurs, or Sally wants to work on her biology report, or dad wants to find a new recipe for grilled chicken, or mom wants to send email to her sister in Seattle. Generally the average household computer will once again be relegated to games, a bit of email, and the occasional balancing of the checkbook.

A few years ago, a commentator on NPR compared the Internet to a small town with friendly neighbors where everyone knew everyone else and no one had to lock their doors. Then word got out about what a nice place it was to live, and all the tourists started showing up. Doors had to be locked, and all the friendly neighbors were smothered behind rows of ugly apartment blocks.

Right now, this small town is suffering from its own success, building everywhere, growing in leaps and bounds, without control or thought. Eventually, like No Name City in "Paint Your Wagon," it's going to collapse under its own weight. After the dust settles, it will once again be the domain of old timers and the few clued individuals who have discovered that the Internet is much more than just a Web and some Usenet posts.

I can't wait.

In the meantime, unlike the AOLs of the world, I want to thank the people who made it possible; the early ARPAnet developers, the people who worked on IP to make it viable, the people who pushed the Internet to be strong and fast, the developers whose work is so fundamental to the Internet that we've all forgotten it's there. All of us who make our livings from this industry, all of us who spend so much time at this as a hobby, anyone who's ever sent email to Aunt Sally, or received a file from Cousin Jed; we all owe these people at least a "thank you." Now if only they could collect royalties.