A lot of these issues were just bootstrap ones; starting a good internet requires shopping service lots of users, which are attracted by... good internet shoppi

A lot of these issues were just bootstrap ones; starting a good internet requires shopping service lots of users, which are attracted by... good internet shopping. Oops. Not many people in 1995 had an appreciation of just how large the internet would get, because roadblocks like this seemed to stop adoption all over the place. In actual fact it was not stopping growth, just slowing it until critical mass was reached. Some of his points are still very valid however: "Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data." This one is _still_ true. It's getting better because of slashdot and other link collectors, plus places like wikipedia, but no one would claim it is totally there yet. Right now the internet is divided into two parts: the known good bit and the unknown quality bit (which includes parts known as good months or years ago, but not checked recently). It isn't as likely as it was in 1995, but if the data you happen to need is in the unknown quality part you are back to the same position as you were in 1995. Plus plenty of people still prefer reading books to reading on a screen :)