Drag Race

The Internet held tremendous promise. If large numbers flocked to it, the advantages of such connectivity were significant. We were still contemplating all the ways that businesses could cooperate and people could find information, products, and services. Who knew all the opportunities that might surface? New concepts were emerging every week!

Some of these ideas depended upon high bandwidth — very fast networking. Sending audio over the web was still too challenging for most networks to handle; and forget about video at any reasonable frame rate. Real Networks was trying to carve out a space in audio broadcasting. Still, I’d hear breaks and delays. The Internet wasn’t handling live feeds well, even with our high speed T1 line.

The media around the Internet was limited in number but not in enthusiasm. It reminded me of the beginning PC days when smaller publications reigned, offering articles of interest to the “power user” set. Every week I’d wait for the column in a local ragsheet for help as I struggled to retrieve names and addresses from Dbase II for use in marketing letters.

In one of these pubs, I found an opinion piece. I admired the author’s sobering view. “Sure, we all want the Internet to be the end-all of networking. But it wasn’t designed for that. The Internet was intended for sharing of articles between researchers and academics – not high-speed, live applications like video-on-demand and Internet phones. We’re all going to wake up with a hangover and get back to work.”

I had to respect the guy for not preaching what the faithful wanted to hear. There were real problems with the Internet. Yet I was unconvinced by the author’s argument. He had outlined all the networking logic that demonstrated the Internet couldn’t be ramped up to handle the flow. But one important factor was lacking: ingenuity. We were an amazing species. When faced with a task or challenge, we plowed through the unknown. Innovation created new possibilities, new solutions. Long shots did occasionally come through. I had a feeling we were all going to be surprised.