CDR: Re: I created the "Al Gore created the Internet" story

jim bell jimdbell at home.com
Wed Oct 18 15:07:00 PDT 2000


----- Original Message -----
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>


> At 12:22 10/18/2000 -0700, jim bell wrote:
> >I ask this, what I believe would be an excellent idea for an article: Why
> >didn't the Internet develop even faster than it actually did?  9600 bps
> >modems existed in 1986, not all that far in performance behind 28Kbps
units.
> >By 1986, numerous clones of the IBM PC and AT existed.
>
> Internet deployment happened at a near-doubling every year starting around
> 1993, coincident with the deployment of the web.

That sounds fast to the non-computer-literate public.  But I expect it was
nothing compared to the (business) market penetration of fax machines in
1985 and 86. That, and the thousands (tens of thousands?) of computer
bulletin-boards during that timeframe showed clearly that people wanted to
communicate using computers, in whatever ways were made available.

> Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II
> computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode).
> Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick.
> -Declan

Well, I didn't say that it would look as beautiful as it does today, with
fancy graphics and all that,  but a lot of what the internet does today
(email, program transfer, some buying and selling) could still have been
done then, albeit a bit slower.   And it was; the problem is that 99+% of
the population couldn't get it, and certainly not for a reasonable price.
Imagine how many cars Detroit would sell if only 1% of the population had
access to the roads.

Other people have answered, and it sounds to me like the NSF (Insufficient
Funds?) simply kept the Internet bottled up by limiting access to it to
universities and government contractors.  Only when they let go of the
controls did things really take off.   Typical government bureaucracy.

Jim Bell






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