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Introduction
The Internet has been used for decades to share once-scarce computer power. Its "user-friendly" form, the World Wide Web, is a relative newborn. Conceived in Europe, the Web was made simple to use by Mosaic software developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at The University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. Now, hundreds of software programs use advanced Web software to enable us to swiftly and easily connect with all the information and all the processing power on all the computers in the world. According to a Global Market Forecast for Internet Commerce released in January, 1996 by International Data Corporation (IDC), the amount of information and the number of users on the Web are increasing exponentially, especially in North America. Initially a hobbyist's toy, the personal computer, or PC, became an important business tool because of a spreadsheet program, VisiCalc, and its successors Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. Word processing programs made the PC valuable for scriveners. Networks allowed email and file sharing among those with similar equipment and software. People increased connectivity by creating Wide Area Networks, and communicated within larger but still separate enterprises. Still, the global variety of hardware and software made it hard for the various users' machines to "talk." Suddenly, Web software from companies like Netscape made communication between all the computers in the world child's play. Growth of the Web exploded: as of June, 1996 "reasonable estimates are that as many
as 40 million people around the world can and do access the enormously
flexible communication Internet medium. That figure is expected to grow
to 200 million Internet users by the year 1999." The Web is also fundamentally different from other media of communication: "Unlike traditional media, the barriers
to entry as a speaker on the Internet do not differ significantly from
the barriers to entry as a listener. Once one has entered cyberspace, one
may engage in the dialogue that occurs there. In the argot of the medium,
the receiver can and does become the content provider, and viceversa.
* * * The Internet is therefore a unique and wholly new medium of worldwide
human communication." Commercial Use of the InternetUsing the Internet for commercial transactions was prohibited when it was a government-funded resource for scientists and academics. The 90's saw billions of dollars invested by for-profit companies providing the communications infrastructure for high-volume Internet use by business, industry and consumers. In 1995, in an internal memo to Microsoft management, Bill Gates said that the Internet was the most important thing to happen since the invention of the PC, and that developing tools for it was thereafter Microsoft's number one business priority. Microsoft has announced that it will incorporate Web browser capability into its next software upgrades, including its business-oriented Office software and server technology, and its new wireless hand-held operating system. Net product vendors report that the biggest purchases of Net technology are by large businesses that are installing "intranets," private Nets within their companies, to enable faster, better communication and sharing of information and experience among their employees and business partners. See "The Internet Inside Your Company," Fortune November 27, 1995; Business Research Group "Web Servers and the Rise of the Corporate Intranet," 1995. See also Andreessen, et al., The Netscape Intranet Vision and Product Roadmap (July, 1996). Other vendors are developing breakthrough means to facilitate electronic commerce, by which Net technology is used to exchange and process orders, invoices, payment and account reconciliation between vendors and purchasers. Traditionally, such transactions were conducted over private, leased "switched line" networks costing more to set up and to use than the "open space" of the Internet. Widespread use of the open Net for commercial transactions, other than for advertising, awaits public acceptance of the security tools that protect users from fraud and theft of private information and from interception of confidential communication. Already, banks, stock brokerages and global retailers offer consumers transactions over the Net. You can move money, buy stocks or order socks over the Net, using your preferred brand of computer, web browser and internet service provider. You can get a loan and buy auto, home and life insurance the same way. Doug Simpson,
Wethersfield, CT This document was first online at lynxcom.com |
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