My interest in it relates to how I missed this as it was happening. I've been interested in computers since 1978, long before the internet became popular. Many people have become filthy rich from computers, yet here I am, toiling in relative obscurity. Perhaps the study of the history of the thing could reveal how and why I seemed to have missed the boat.
Why should anyone else be interested in this? Well, I don't know. If you're interest includes making a ton of money, perhaps you shouldn't be paying attention to me. On the other hand, perhaps something could be learned from this- it may be profitable to study it.
My first computing device was called a Video Text, and I purchased it in the spring of 1982. I'm not totally sure, but the internet may have been functioning by that time. So, I went to the old trusty Wikipedia to get the history of the internet in order to see the timeline. Here's a quote from the article:
In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) developed the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In December 1974, RFC 675 – Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet, as a shorthand for internetworking; later RFCs repeat this use, so the word started out as an adjective rather than the noun it is today.
By the time I got the videotext computer from Radio Shack, the internet was up and running. Al Gore had nothing to do with this part of the history of the internet. That's why the joke is on Al.
By 1982, I had finished up my degree in Computer Science, and set out to find a job. But the Houston job market was really bad and I had no luck. The purchase of the computer was a way for me to keep a hand in on the computer field. Little did I know the significance of what was happening. Behind the scenes a bit, micro computers were finding their way on the market, and a guy named Bill Gates had written some code for the ROM in the Altair computer. Actually, Gates was on the scene in the mid seventies, so I was already a bit late. Actually, by 1982, Gates career was well on the way. At that time, I did talk to somebody about a job using CP/M, which is a forerunner of MSDOS, which is what Gates really rich.
Of course, I understood nothing about the significance of CP/M. If I had, I might have wanted to kill in order to get that job. The significance of CP/M became clear when IBM introduced its first PC. That story is a result of an anti trust lawsuit against IBM, in which IBM agreed to develop an open architecture computer, which led in turn to the PC clone business. A funny thing, it was called the IBM 5150. I worked on a desktop computer at IBM NASA in 1979, as a kind of workstudy job. The name of the computer was quite similar to this name, but the computer was a bit different, to say the least. Its innards were proprietary, the innards of the PC were not, that's why it is called an open architecture. It could be built with parts "off the shelf". Only a small part of the machine was proprietary, but that was soon to be overcome, and the IBM clones were born. You see, CP/M could run on these machines, and IBM selected Gates, who obtained a cloned copy of CP/M, which became known as MSDOS.
The significance there was that IBM couldn't control the PC market. That was the intent of the anti trust suit.
The result was a boom in the PC clone business and Gates got rich. Now there was a large market for PC's and a networking architecture in place waiting to be combined at the right time. But the IBM PC's and their clones were too unsophisticated. They needed to grow up.
When I got around to buying my first "real" personal computer, it was about 1984. I considered buying an IBM PC, but the reason I didn't was because the Apple had better graphics. That was one of the reasons. The upshot was that I wasted too much time on something that wasn't going to work out. That particular line of the Apple didn't work out, but the Macintosh did. The Macintosh had a graphical user interface. The IBM PC and the Apple had a "command line" interface, which was not exactly user friendly. I didn't recognize the significance of the graphical user interface. A pattern begins to emerge. I failed to recognize the significance of events as they unfolded.
A better decision would have been to buy a Macintosh. Subsequently, I understood my mistake as not having bought the PC, but the PC wasn't optimal either. I was getting further and further behind in terms of staying at the leading edge.
But the graphical user interface of the Macintosh didn't win out. The reason had a lot to do with the cost of the machine, in my opinion. The PC clones were driving the cost of the machines down, so their popularity had a chance to grow. In the meantime, the capabilities of the PC were gaining ground on the Macintosh. But the PC was always a bit behind in elegance. Jobs got booted from Apple, so that didn't help. Gates developed Windows, which supplanted the clunky MSDOS. Personally, I began to favor the clones because of the open architecture. I avoided Windows because of the bad things I heard about it.
The time now would be around 1990. At this time, I was using Prodigy. I had heard of bulletin boards and such, but didn't visit many of those. But Prodigy had one and I ran into a guy named Taegan Goddard. He was interested in people's software, so I replied to him about mine. He suggested that I try to get published with an outfit where he published his stuff. I got a little familar with his work and I noticed his use of graphical user interface. The comparison didn't favor me, as mine didn't have one. That's what led to the rejection of my software- not user friendly enough.
If I had understood the significance of that, it might have helped. Evidently, I am a bit thick headed, so I didn't. User friendliness is absolutely essential in the success of software. So was the case for the first web browsers that were soon to become available. If only I understood that.
Another thing I was doing was to become interested in the stock market. In 1987, I almost became a stock broker. But there was this stock market crash, and I felt fortunate to not have become part of that.
In the late eighties, Microsoft went public. Imagine buying a hundred shares of Microsoft just after its IPO.
Crash or no crash, that alone could have made someone a millionaire. But there's still a missing piece to this puzzle. What was the catalyst that made the World Wide Web so popular?
There had to be a connection between the internet as it had existed at that point, plus the hardware and software that was now available. I think that connection was made by Tim Berners-Lee. Just one more thing needed to complete the picture, a web browser. That's where Marc Andreessen and the Mosaic browser comes in, and the World Wide Web was off to the races. But why? The Mosaic browser was not the first. But it was the first to include graphics and text simultaneously, or in line with the text. The graphics capability is what made Mosaic popular, in my opinion.
A good sense for what's popular is another ingredient for success. It goes with recognizing the significance of events. There are those who recognized this significance and got very rich. Those who didn't, did not.
Al Gore couldn't take credit for the World Wide Web. However, his efforts did help along the way. The credit for the invention of the web go to many authors, not just one.
Politicians shouldn't take too much credit, but often they do. But it should be kept in mind that strategic expenditures can make a big difference. For this, Gore should be given some credit at least.
Incidentally, this is another opportunity for me to say that ideology can make you stupid. If you think that private enterprise will always do the job, you haven't been paying attention. On the other hand, the government can't do it either. No, the best thing for the government is to provide the environment which can allow success to blossom. If on the one hand, you think that government created the internet, you'd be wrong. On the other hand, if you claim that government had nothing to do with it, you'd also be wrong.
The key is to recognize the significance of events. Indiscriminate spending on something will not yield results. Only intelligent efforts can succeed, as opposed to brute force or thoughtless actions.
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