Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine /
Volume 1, Number 3 / July 1, 1994 / Page 11
From the Nets...
by
John December
(john@december.com)
Waves...
US Vice President Al Gore
was the one to do it first. On "Larry King Live,"
CNN, June 15th, Gore said the phrase "information
highway" soon after King had promised to keep the
cliche from the broadcast. But Reed Hundt,
chairman of the FCC,
was the one who brought the real gadget--a
Motorola telephone, reminiscent of the communications
devices in the Jetson
cartoons that opened the show, and when he
handed it to King, Larry
seemed to want to put in
his pocket and take it home.
Vic Sussman, senior editor of US News and
World Report, sitting next to Gore, mentioned that there was
already an information highway in existence, something
called the Internet; and the massive, rapid growth
of it demonstrated the pull of
human contact, versus the fantasies of Jetson-like gadgetry...
Andy Grove, co-founder and CEO of Intel,
said that he didn't think government roles were
all that helpful for propagating new technology...
King promised more shows with the same crowd... ¤
Threads...
More fun with lawyers.... If you're a fan of
fingerinfo
you won't see the
Nielson TV ratings
or the
Billboard charts there any more...
The individuals distributing these lists through their
Internet accounts allegedly violated laws by
disseminating copyrighted material without permission.
I'll support copyright law enforcement
until the all the Web spiders come home....
What is significant about these cases is
that major, commercial information producers
now see individuals' .plan files accessed through
finger
as competition...
I remember seeing the Billboard top music lists printed on a Decwriter
terminal hooked up to
a dialup computer connection (the one with the suction cups
to go over the phone) when I was in a sophomore in
high school (in 1978).
Dissemination of Billboard's lists
through informal channels over networks has
happened on computer networks for decades.
However,
the Billboard finger address did
happen to be mentioned in the May issue of Wired
... ¤
Former MTV VJ Adam Curry's server
with mtv.com as a domain name may change its name,
based on MTV's wishes
... ¤
Catches...
The largest and oldest service for online scholarship,
The Communications Institute for Online Scholarship/Comserve,
has entered gopherspace...
... ¤
Hold onto your VR helmets, it's the
Virtual Reality Markup Language
(VRML)
... ¤
Visiting
WebWorld reminded me a bit of my recent trip to the
Wisconsin Dells, but I just had to build
something there :).
... ¤
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