Who needs 'internet' when we have fax? An 'expert's' view from 1996 | Hacker News Reader

Who needs 'internet' when we have fax? An 'expert's' view from 1996

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10 pointsdeusclovis15 comments

The article is written in English and includes a mention of teletext, which means the author was probably in the UK. The UK wasn't quite on the bleeding edge of internet tech in the late 90's. Computers were much more expensive in the UK than in North America or Asia and local telephone calls were metered by the minute. If you paid for a month's subscription to an internet provider, you'd still have pay your telco by the minute just to use your dial-up modem! Needless to say, not only did this make everything more expensive, it also added time-pressure to browsing. Get on, get your data, get off! Quick! It's a minor thing, but really must have changed the experience for early users in the UK.

From my own experience of being an internet obsessed teenager in the UK at that time I'd say the internet was definitely considered a luxury because of the cost involved.

My parents had no idea I was spending hours on the internet until they received their first £200+ monthly phone bill. To say they were unhappy would be an understatement.

If you weren't alive and sentient during the time this was written, it's pretty easy to dismiss it as absurd. I mean, obviously this guy was a total fool, right? He didn't see the overwhelming tidal wave of change coming at him! What a moron! He should've looked past the fact that nobody knew what the internet was, and that only a few people even had modems. Or that it was so difficult for the average person to connect to "the net" that the idea of a coffeehouse full of dedicated "internet computers" that you rented by the hour seemed like a great business plan.

What are you dismissing as absurd right now? Maybe it's a lame portable music player that seems small and primitive. Maybe it's a me-too social network for Harvard undergrads. Maybe it's a website where you rent out your air mattress to strangers.

In other words: we're all living in a big glass house. Easy with the stones.

I think you are being to kind if this was written in 86 it would be fair comment in 86 when online was Telecom Gold (dialcom) PRESTEL and CIX.

But in 96 the internet was just starting to ramp up and beak out of the nerd ghetto.

This was out of date in 1996. I agree with others that if it was 1986 there would be an excuse, but in 96, then he was giving out bad info.

We had already seen the rise and fall of Cello and Mosaic. Trumpet Winsock was envy where. Here in the UK we had services such as Demon offering an Internet connection for £10 a month. Internet magazine had been running for a couple of years. Hell even my book had been out for a few years (http://www.amazon.com/The-Internet-Via-Mosaic-World-Wide/dp/...) and was already totally out of date due to the fast moving nature of things.

I think it was around then that even CompuServe were moving from the traditional CSi back end over to fully Internet based systems.

The UK was pretty Internet savvy in 96. Far more than this consultant was, anyway.

Actually, when you think of it, a lot of comparisons being made actually quite hold if we take into account that there is no Google. It used to be much easier to look for a local plumber in the Yellow Pages than on the Web.

I don't think many of us are really aware of the difference that was made by Google's search engine.

There were search engines before Google came along. Lycos (1994) and Alta Vista (1995) existed at the time this article was written.

I know, and I have used them, along with HotBot, Inktomi, Infoseek, Northern Light and others. But it was Google which brought the level of confidence in search results which we take for granted nowadays, and which make it convenient not to remember or bookmark a URL since we're pretty sure we'll be able to easily find it at any time.

>This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

>"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

>"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" -- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

Point being that for every good invention somebody will think it has no value. The opposite is also likely to be the case so the really interesting question is how do you distinques between the two?

They buried something. And now it's reaching out, calling us in. And you came. So when it comes right down to it, why did you come here? I'll tell you why. Because it was there! Brilliant! Human beings. You are amazing!

The author notices that people use the internet to discover things they didn't know before, but fails to recognize how HUGE that is. People are suckers for information. One characteristic at the base of our existence and development is curiosity. Curiosity got us to 1996, when the internet was just starting up, but curiosity also got us to the fax machine and the phone.

Yes, there will also be business people. There will always be people trying to make money off it, because that's another thing that characterizes most of us. But at the core, all we want to ever do is be better in any way possible, we want to simply .. know more.

I was 12 when this was written. We had a computer that could connect to the internet via dial-up, pay by the minute.

My experience with the internet was that it was useless, but exciting. I'm not sure why exactly it felt exciting, but I think it had something to do with the chaos of it. There was porn (and rumours about the porn). Information about drugs and weird religions. About a year after this article, I could use huge internet directories to do what I now do procrastinating on wikipedia and ICQ for what we now call social networking. ICQ had a button started a chat with a random person somewhere in the world. 90% would chat back.

I think the wildness of it somehow signalled to me that it was a big deal. Wild means open ended. Thats ultimately what made the internet different from telephones, fax, teletext and all the other stuff the author compares it to.

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Flagged.

The kicker is at the end, when he calls the Internet a fad, "like skateboarding or mountain bikes." I hope this is real.

In 1996, this could very well be real. In fact it was quite a common opinion, held by many intelligent people.

And many aspects of the Internet were just that, fads. With hyped up "cyber"-everything, it was hard to see the forest for the trees. Hence the bubble and collapse.

Also, it took a long time for the Internet to actually be better at many things. Yellow Pages mentioned are a good example. It took a decade from hype to reality before the Internet made the local Yellow Pages superfluous.

(Personally, I had been waiting for something like the internet to happen since the 80's, but that makes me a hacker and a nerd, not a visionary...)

A lot of things that people are writing about the future of technology today will probably seem equally ridiculous in 17 years.

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