It's interesting that he wrote this as a user of the internet for 2 decades in 1995. So between 1975 and 1995, the pace of change was just not that great. Then between say, 1995 and 2015, a lot changed indeed. Faster connections, ubiquitous wireless internet, e-readers, fast laptops, smart phones, e-commerce explosion, video portals and streaming, social media, etc.
It feels to me the pace of change has slowed though. Maybe that's the way innovation goes. Sometimes in big bursts but mostly incremental.
I agree that small group conversations are probably the next wave of social media, because you need that circle of trust to be fully expressive.
If I had to guess, I would say we will perfect VR over the next couple decades and that we will replicate some of the brick and mortar experiences that way, but it will still not ever quite replace in person interaction. There's always going to be that uncanny valley between the cyber world and the real world.
The "web" generally refers to http/html which were extremely new in 1995, much newer than generic tcp/ip networking. The first netscape navigator was released in 1994!
I agree. I remember hearing Clifford Stoll interviewed on the radio around 1995 and reading reviews of his book "Silicon Snake Oil," which was published the same year, and thinking that he was obviously wrong. It was just such a game-changer for me to be able to sit in my home in Tokyo, and, through a dial-up modem, get information I needed from throughout the world—information that otherwise would have required a trip to a major library or bookstore, if it was even available there. And to be able to find people interested in chatting about topics that no one else in Japan would have cared about. The Internet was clearly the future.
Cliff's viewpoint was definitely contrarian, but on the other hand many people thought that the internet would be a kind of utopia - either full of rational speech leading to better decision-making in the real world, or even a separate independent "nation" that governments could never control. Neither of those turned out to be fully true either.
When the internet was handles you could say anything and rarely worry it would follow you back in life. Now people use real names on social media.. which makes it about defining what imagine I want to be.
For some reason the myth that in the old days of the internet people used "handles" or nicknames and not real identities crops up here all the time. I can only assume people making the claim weren't on the internet in the 20th century and/or were on AOL.
On the Facebook of the 1990s, Usenet, people routinely posted with their real name/identity and real email address, and message headers showed each server the post passed through from its origin, the IP address of the poster (which could and did result in doxxing) and often an "abuse@ISP" email address to complain about the post/poster.
True, but that was for convenience, not because we thought we needed to have a "real identity". (IP addresses were later, ISPs were much later, but yes, UUCP hops were recorded. FWIW, my UUCP paths ended in something close to my legal name.)
Remember some of early Usenet, I wouldn't be surprised if some people had taken advantage of Californian naming laws (at the time, one could use almost any name one wanted, as long as it was consistent and not intended for fraud) to make their legal name more consistent with their online handle.
Mark V. Shaney is an example of a user who was not using their real name/identity (nor even had one).
Quaxity quuxity,
Teitelman's InterLISP
Has a DWIM feature that's
Really a screw;
MacLISP has evident
Superiority,
Letting its customer
Mean what he do.
As a teenager at the time it was impressed on us how important it was to not use our real name on the internet. I didn't use my real name for anything on the internet for at least 10 years after I started using it.
University logins were handles (usually close to "real", but not tied) in my time. I firmly believe the whole real identity thing has always been driven by advertising considerations.
(Our undergrad computing lab had donated CAD workstations, so someone came up with a graphical display of the room, showing who was logged in where. The TA was displeased with me after figuring out that I had set my avatar to the "unoccupied" graphic. IIRC, he added a square outline for logged-in workstations to the display, around the same time.)
It feels to me the pace of change has slowed though. Maybe that's the way innovation goes. Sometimes in big bursts but mostly incremental.
I agree that small group conversations are probably the next wave of social media, because you need that circle of trust to be fully expressive.
If I had to guess, I would say we will perfect VR over the next couple decades and that we will replicate some of the brick and mortar experiences that way, but it will still not ever quite replace in person interaction. There's always going to be that uncanny valley between the cyber world and the real world.