6 ms·

What if the Web never happened

79 points by Luyt 15y ago

pbreit 15y ago
We have a pretty good idea of what would have happened without the us government developing the Internet: 1) compuserve, genie, aol, prodigy, et al. and 2) SMS messaging.
blumentopf 15y ago
Not sure if the author of this piece actually witnessed what the Internet was like without the WWW. Or, more specifically, without NCSA Mosaic, which really jumpstarted the WWW. My experience back then was that the Internet did grow exponentially even when the WWW was not yet popular. Much faster than Compuserve and others. Also, the allegation that Linux wouldn't have happened is bogus since development of Linux actually started way before 1993/94 (when NCSA Mosaic made the Web popular).
- yuhong 15y ago
  >Or, more specifically, without NCSA Mosaic, which really jumpstarted the WWW. It also harmed HTML too. For example, originally HTML was not based on SGML. But Dan Connolly decided it should be based on SGML in 1992. Sadly for them, Mosaic was released next year, which was also not fully compliant with SGML.
- gwern 15y ago
  I think Eric S. Raymond witnessed the pre-WWW Internet.
  - mikecane 15y ago
    So did I. And I Commented and I think his essay is a parlor game. Amusing, annoying, but not to be taken seriously.
    - shareme 15y ago
      why not to be taken seriously? There was a movement by AT&T to block research and implementation of internet or have you forgotten. In fact they wanted the infrastructure done their way not decentralized, etc. Than there was FIdonet, etc.
      - mechanical_fish 15y ago
        Because time does not go backwards? The problem with counterfactual history is that history is nonlinear: The things which do happen affect the things that don't. In particular, it is very hard to write the future history of things that were squelched by larger forces before they could grow big. Squelched things are obscure. They are hard to research. It's hard enough to write an actual early history of, say, Apple -- much of it was witnessed only by a handful of people, and memory is fallible, and lots of traditions have obscure beginnings -- but how do you write the future history of the company that Steve Jobs would have started if Woz had decided to remain at H-P? It's like trying to predict hurricanes by tracking all the butterflies.
      - mikecane 15y ago
        Look, by being here you should understand one basic thing: What big companies do doesn't matter in terms of what society wants done. Successful companies ride the wave of society, not dictate. Dictators don't last. Any AT&T interference wouldn't have mattered. It's like saying IBM could have stopped personal computing.
- mpk 15y ago
  The Internet was alive and well before the web came along. It was certainly a different beast at the time but the author is spot-on when observing that the distributed, anarchic nature of ARPANET lies at its foundation. There is also an alternate scenario that might be interesting to speculate about. Before wide-spread internet availability a lot of people were connecting to (mostly) privately run BBSes. Inter-BBS networks like FIDONET were developed for passing email between FIDONET nodes with gateways into other systems (including, IIRC the internet). In a world without ARPNET based internet it's not hard to imagine commercial services being built around this. Given enough volume these services would start setting up dedicated links to each other. Enough services start doing this and it makes sense to set up exchange points. All these services rely on the same protocol to communicate over exchange points and that would make proprietary protocol changes difficult so a more-or-less open engineering consortium would be the next logical step to push such changes. Real time communication over this network would be a real commercial selling point (hello chat systems!) so next thing you know you have 'special' emails with high priority and some extra flags that don't end up in email boxes but are sent to end-user programs that only send and receive the 'special' emails. (Hey there protocol selection!). This wouldn't get us the web any time soon (this kind of network wouldn't have room for arbitrary data floating around), but market forces + social momentum could conceivably build an alternative version of a global data communication network.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
joezydeco 15y ago
We'd have some damn fine Gopher browsers with 20 years under their belts.
ralfd 15y ago
Without the Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel "The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste). From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet. In February 2009, France Telecom indicates the Minitel network still has 10 million monthly connections, among which 1 million on the 3611 (directory). France Telecom is mulling an end of the service in September 2011[1]."
- mikecane 15y ago
  There was also Prestel and Teletext in England. Time, Inc. invested a ton of money here in a teletext startup. I don't know why they abandoned it but "who owned the VBI" (vertical blanking interval, which would carry teletext) was an issue back then too. AT&T also had NAPLPS in the works. Times Mirror and at least one other company I can't recall (in Florida) had NAPLPS systems up and going. Time Warner had Qube on cable in Ohio (Columbus?). None of them had the life or vibrancy or innovation of the BBS subculture.
ssp 15y ago
It's amusing to see a die-hard libertarian like ESR describe a dystopia where online services are being developed by private entrepreneurs rather than the US Government.
- eugenejen 15y ago
  I think some libertarians support small governments and small corporations. Large corporations always use their influence on governments. This happens for a lot of time around the world. Those corporations influence governments to stipulate laws that protect their own interests rather than interest of proletariat. The most disturbing aspect is that those large corporations propaganda as they are in fact protecting proletariat's property right. In a country such as U.S. where 1% in populations control 33% of the wealth and 10% in population control 66% of the wealth, the law is not for protecting 90% population's property right, but the 10%. You doubts this? Look at RIAA, MPAA's effort in U.S. Congress. P.S. I am a closet libertarian.
  - shriphani 15y ago
    Why "closet"?
    - bluekeybox 15y ago
      Because he hasn't come out of it yet; just look how impetuously he's attacking property owners.
      - quanticle 15y ago
        The right to intellectual property isn't a natural right like the right to physical property. The Constitution states that intellectual property (i.e. copyrights and patents) exist to serve the purpose of encouraging innovation. The RIAA, MPAA and software patent trolls' abuse of these rules serves to hinder innovation, and therefore these rules should be revised. I don't think there's anything especially revolutionary in what I just stated.
kellishaver 15y ago
Technology aside, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the social implications of no web, even on a personal level. My husband, my boss, my two very closest friends, the nonprofit I volunteer with that means so much to me - those all started first as internet acquaintances that grew into real, offline relationships that span thousands of miles and have had a profound impact on my life and have shaped who I am - and I'm just one person.
sdfwefwe 15y ago
ONLINE STORE : ==== ( http://dv.gd/24993 http://dv.gd/24993 )===== Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23 Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15 ed hardy short_tank_woman $16 Sandal $32 christian louboutin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27 handbag $33 AF tank woman $17 puma slipper woman $30 ====( http://dv.gd/24993 http://dv.gd/24993 )===== ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～╭⌒╮ ,））））,''）~~ ,''~） ╱◥█◣ ╱◥█◣ ｜田｜田｜｜田｜田｜ ╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬
noonespecial 15y ago
Something like FIDOnet would have taken it's place as the hacker-aether. Linux would be alive and well.
joeyh 15y ago
Tim Wu argues persuasively in The Master Switch and elsewhere that these things come in cycles, and that we're well on our way out of the cycle that led to an open internet, and into a cycle of consolidation and control (see: Facebook, locked down cell phone networks, net neutrality, etc).
- pjscott 15y ago
  At least in the quickly-expanding Android world, cell phone networks seem to be getting less locked down, and this trend shows no sign of slowing.
michaelpinto 15y ago
As someone who played with both HyperCard and too many a BBS back in the day I can tell you that the web was inevitable (see FidoNet). It might have evolved in half a dozen ways and looked slightly different, but it would have happened. Also having somewhat survived the dot.com era of the 90s I'd have to say what really gave the web its power was broadband getting to the masses, and several industries gave that push. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet
- dragonsky 15y ago
  Fidonet was my first thought as well. I remember with some nostalgia sending emails to England from Australia back in the Fidonet days. It took a day or so to be delivered, but it did get there. The only restriction on Fidonet was the cost of international phone calls. I think, like the steam engine, inter-networking was a technology who's time had come.
- bane 15y ago
  I was going to say that Gopher would have probably morphed and evolved into something not too dissimilar to the web we have today -- it had the hyperlink idea down. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) I remember a few graphical BBS systems that also had some of the conceptual underpinnings of the web today in terms of graphical interfaces. But I agree, We would have probably ended up with something pretty much like we have today.
- chalst 15y ago
  We wouldn't have had the IETF, and I think that would have made it a messier and less sophisticated affair.
maeon3 15y ago
Maybe what we know as the internet is a woefully inadequate imitation of what it COULD HAVE been. If only some influential people at DARPA could have done a few things differently, then technological advancment would have happened an order of magnitude faster, and we would already be a space faring civilization.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Why does an advanced internet automatically imply space travel?
- dmoney 15y ago
  What should they have done differently?
jamesgagan 15y ago
hey i remember my 300 baud atari modem good times! - the web would have happened one way or another!
bonch 15y ago
The article is a little silly in that it pretends walled gardens don't already exist. To many people, the web is just Facebook and Yahoo Mail.
- chalst 15y ago
  I don't think the web is Yahoo Mail to many people. I think this might be a prelude to an attack on Facebook.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  That's not a walled garden, it's a hedge maze. You can get out of it you're willing to put in a modicum of effort.
yaix 15y ago
>>Technological change has a tendency to look inevitable in retrospect – “It steam-engines when it’s steam-engine time.” You would think so. But basically all parts of the steam engine where invented in Roman times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology). Unfortunately, the empire collapsed before anybody found the time to put the parts together. If they had, we would... well, something.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Even earlier than that actually - the Greeks had both the differential gear and the steam engine. There is pretty much nothing technological that would have prevented Athens from destroying its opponents with steam powered tanks several centuries B.C. Plus at the time the standard tactic would be a deep phalanx, which would have been absolutely smashed by a tank driving over it.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Has anyone written an alternate history novel along these lines?
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      I happen to host the blog (among others) of an author who has written just such a novel: Bring Laws and Gods. It should be released some time this year. http://skepticlawyer.com.au/tag/bring-laws-and-gods/ http://skepticlawyer.com.au/tag/bring-laws-and-gods/ The historical point of departure is that Archimedes of Syracuse was captured, not killed, and brought back to Rome.
      - pavel_lishin 15y ago
        Can you gently suggest to him that his blog is really hard to navigate? I can't even figure out where to find information about the book.
        15y ago
gaius 15y ago
From the article: The pretense being maintained was that only direct affiliates of government-sponsored, authorized research programs were being allowed on and One such serendipity was the invention of the World Wide Web But that's contradictory - Tim Berners-Lee was a full member of an official research project when he invented the WWW!
kragen 15y ago
I don't understand how he got through this entire post without mentioning AIM, Facebook, Live.com, and Gmail, which are doing their damnedest to make his vision come true.
jaysonelliot 15y ago
The scenario presented here seems to mistake the Web for the Internet. Before the Web was invented, Usenet (and to a lesser extent, WAIS and Gopher) was a thriving protocol, with relatively large numbers of people participating daily. Usenet was my first introduction to the Internet, and for years, it was to me what Facebook is to many people now. There were MUDs where we spent many late hours engaged with other Internet users around the world, and yes, our email systems were on the Internet. Thousands of independent ISPs were thriving before the Web came along, most having gotten their start as dial-up BBSes. Each provided access to a wealth of Internet services. For that matter, hyperlinking was already commonplace in Gopher, and fairly mature in Hypercard. CD-ROMs were introducing rich multimedia experiences before the Web came along, and it doesn't take much of an imagination to move from CD-ROMs and Gopher to something very similar to the Web we know today. It's fun to imagine alternate dystopian histories, but the one described here is far-fetched, to say the very least.

79 points by Luyt 15y ago

We have a pretty good idea of what would have happened without the us government developing the Internet: 1) compuserve, genie, aol, prodigy, et al. and 2) SMS messaging.

blumentopf 15y ago

Not sure if the author of this piece actually witnessed what the Internet was like without the WWW. Or, more specifically, without NCSA Mosaic, which really jumpstarted the WWW. My experience back then was that the Internet did grow exponentially even when the WWW was not yet popular. Much faster than Compuserve and others. Also, the allegation that Linux wouldn't have happened is bogus since development of Linux actually started way before 1993/94 (when NCSA Mosaic made the Web popular).

yuhong 15y ago
>Or, more specifically, without NCSA Mosaic, which really jumpstarted the WWW. It also harmed HTML too. For example, originally HTML was not based on SGML. But Dan Connolly decided it should be based on SGML in 1992. Sadly for them, Mosaic was released next year, which was also not fully compliant with SGML.
gwern 15y ago
I think Eric S. Raymond witnessed the pre-WWW Internet.
- mikecane 15y ago
  So did I. And I Commented and I think his essay is a parlor game. Amusing, annoying, but not to be taken seriously.
  - shareme 15y ago
    why not to be taken seriously? There was a movement by AT&T to block research and implementation of internet or have you forgotten. In fact they wanted the infrastructure done their way not decentralized, etc. Than there was FIdonet, etc.
    - mechanical_fish 15y ago
      Because time does not go backwards? The problem with counterfactual history is that history is nonlinear: The things which do happen affect the things that don't. In particular, it is very hard to write the future history of things that were squelched by larger forces before they could grow big. Squelched things are obscure. They are hard to research. It's hard enough to write an actual early history of, say, Apple -- much of it was witnessed only by a handful of people, and memory is fallible, and lots of traditions have obscure beginnings -- but how do you write the future history of the company that Steve Jobs would have started if Woz had decided to remain at H-P? It's like trying to predict hurricanes by tracking all the butterflies.
    - mikecane 15y ago
      Look, by being here you should understand one basic thing: What big companies do doesn't matter in terms of what society wants done. Successful companies ride the wave of society, not dictate. Dictators don't last. Any AT&T interference wouldn't have mattered. It's like saying IBM could have stopped personal computing.
mpk 15y ago
The Internet was alive and well before the web came along. It was certainly a different beast at the time but the author is spot-on when observing that the distributed, anarchic nature of ARPANET lies at its foundation. There is also an alternate scenario that might be interesting to speculate about. Before wide-spread internet availability a lot of people were connecting to (mostly) privately run BBSes. Inter-BBS networks like FIDONET were developed for passing email between FIDONET nodes with gateways into other systems (including, IIRC the internet). In a world without ARPNET based internet it's not hard to imagine commercial services being built around this. Given enough volume these services would start setting up dedicated links to each other. Enough services start doing this and it makes sense to set up exchange points. All these services rely on the same protocol to communicate over exchange points and that would make proprietary protocol changes difficult so a more-or-less open engineering consortium would be the next logical step to push such changes. Real time communication over this network would be a real commercial selling point (hello chat systems!) so next thing you know you have 'special' emails with high priority and some extra flags that don't end up in email boxes but are sent to end-user programs that only send and receive the 'special' emails. (Hey there protocol selection!). This wouldn't get us the web any time soon (this kind of network wouldn't have room for arbitrary data floating around), but market forces + social momentum could conceivably build an alternative version of a global data communication network.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

joezydeco 15y ago

We'd have some damn fine Gopher browsers with 20 years under their belts.

ralfd 15y ago

Without the Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel "The Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications; divided since 1991 between France Télécom and La Poste). From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to that now made possible by the Internet. In February 2009, France Telecom indicates the Minitel network still has 10 million monthly connections, among which 1 million on the 3611 (directory). France Telecom is mulling an end of the service in September 2011[1]."

mikecane 15y ago
There was also Prestel and Teletext in England. Time, Inc. invested a ton of money here in a teletext startup. I don't know why they abandoned it but "who owned the VBI" (vertical blanking interval, which would carry teletext) was an issue back then too. AT&T also had NAPLPS in the works. Times Mirror and at least one other company I can't recall (in Florida) had NAPLPS systems up and going. Time Warner had Qube on cable in Ohio (Columbus?). None of them had the life or vibrancy or innovation of the BBS subculture.

ssp 15y ago

It's amusing to see a die-hard libertarian like ESR describe a dystopia where online services are being developed by private entrepreneurs rather than the US Government.

eugenejen 15y ago
I think some libertarians support small governments and small corporations. Large corporations always use their influence on governments. This happens for a lot of time around the world. Those corporations influence governments to stipulate laws that protect their own interests rather than interest of proletariat. The most disturbing aspect is that those large corporations propaganda as they are in fact protecting proletariat's property right. In a country such as U.S. where 1% in populations control 33% of the wealth and 10% in population control 66% of the wealth, the law is not for protecting 90% population's property right, but the 10%. You doubts this? Look at RIAA, MPAA's effort in U.S. Congress. P.S. I am a closet libertarian.
- shriphani 15y ago
  Why "closet"?
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    Because he hasn't come out of it yet; just look how impetuously he's attacking property owners.
    - quanticle 15y ago
      The right to intellectual property isn't a natural right like the right to physical property. The Constitution states that intellectual property (i.e. copyrights and patents) exist to serve the purpose of encouraging innovation. The RIAA, MPAA and software patent trolls' abuse of these rules serves to hinder innovation, and therefore these rules should be revised. I don't think there's anything especially revolutionary in what I just stated.

kellishaver 15y ago

Technology aside, I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the social implications of no web, even on a personal level. My husband, my boss, my two very closest friends, the nonprofit I volunteer with that means so much to me - those all started first as internet acquaintances that grew into real, offline relationships that span thousands of miles and have had a profound impact on my life and have shaped who I am - and I'm just one person.

sdfwefwe 15y ago

ONLINE STORE : ==== ( http://dv.gd/24993 http://dv.gd/24993 )===== Christan Audigier bikini $23 Ed Hardy Bikini $23 Smful short_t-shirt_woman $15 ed hardy short_tank_woman $16 Sandal $32 christian louboutin $80 Sunglass $15 COACH_Necklace $27 handbag $33 AF tank woman $17 puma slipper woman $30 ====( http://dv.gd/24993 http://dv.gd/24993 )===== ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ~ ¤ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╮ ╭⌒╭⌒╮╭⌒╮～╭⌒╮ ,））））,''）~~ ,''~） ╱◥█◣ ╱◥█◣ ｜田｜田｜｜田｜田｜ ╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬╬

noonespecial 15y ago

Something like FIDOnet would have taken it's place as the hacker-aether. Linux would be alive and well.

joeyh 15y ago

Tim Wu argues persuasively in The Master Switch and elsewhere that these things come in cycles, and that we're well on our way out of the cycle that led to an open internet, and into a cycle of consolidation and control (see: Facebook, locked down cell phone networks, net neutrality, etc).

pjscott 15y ago
At least in the quickly-expanding Android world, cell phone networks seem to be getting less locked down, and this trend shows no sign of slowing.

michaelpinto 15y ago

As someone who played with both HyperCard and too many a BBS back in the day I can tell you that the web was inevitable (see FidoNet). It might have evolved in half a dozen ways and looked slightly different, but it would have happened. Also having somewhat survived the dot.com era of the 90s I'd have to say what really gave the web its power was broadband getting to the masses, and several industries gave that push. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

dragonsky 15y ago
Fidonet was my first thought as well. I remember with some nostalgia sending emails to England from Australia back in the Fidonet days. It took a day or so to be delivered, but it did get there. The only restriction on Fidonet was the cost of international phone calls. I think, like the steam engine, inter-networking was a technology who's time had come.
bane 15y ago
I was going to say that Gopher would have probably morphed and evolved into something not too dissimilar to the web we have today -- it had the hyperlink idea down. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) I remember a few graphical BBS systems that also had some of the conceptual underpinnings of the web today in terms of graphical interfaces. But I agree, We would have probably ended up with something pretty much like we have today.
chalst 15y ago
We wouldn't have had the IETF, and I think that would have made it a messier and less sophisticated affair.

maeon3 15y ago

Maybe what we know as the internet is a woefully inadequate imitation of what it COULD HAVE been. If only some influential people at DARPA could have done a few things differently, then technological advancment would have happened an order of magnitude faster, and we would already be a space faring civilization.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
Why does an advanced internet automatically imply space travel?
dmoney 15y ago
What should they have done differently?

jamesgagan 15y ago

hey i remember my 300 baud atari modem good times! - the web would have happened one way or another!

bonch 15y ago

The article is a little silly in that it pretends walled gardens don't already exist. To many people, the web is just Facebook and Yahoo Mail.

chalst 15y ago
I don't think the web is Yahoo Mail to many people. I think this might be a prelude to an attack on Facebook.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
That's not a walled garden, it's a hedge maze. You can get out of it you're willing to put in a modicum of effort.

yaix 15y ago

>>Technological change has a tendency to look inevitable in retrospect – “It steam-engines when it’s steam-engine time.” You would think so. But basically all parts of the steam engine where invented in Roman times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology). Unfortunately, the empire collapsed before anybody found the time to put the parts together. If they had, we would... well, something.

tomjen3 15y ago
Even earlier than that actually - the Greeks had both the differential gear and the steam engine. There is pretty much nothing technological that would have prevented Athens from destroying its opponents with steam powered tanks several centuries B.C. Plus at the time the standard tactic would be a deep phalanx, which would have been absolutely smashed by a tank driving over it.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Has anyone written an alternate history novel along these lines?
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    I happen to host the blog (among others) of an author who has written just such a novel: Bring Laws and Gods. It should be released some time this year. http://skepticlawyer.com.au/tag/bring-laws-and-gods/ http://skepticlawyer.com.au/tag/bring-laws-and-gods/ The historical point of departure is that Archimedes of Syracuse was captured, not killed, and brought back to Rome.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      Can you gently suggest to him that his blog is really hard to navigate? I can't even figure out where to find information about the book.
      - 15y ago

gaius 15y ago

From the article: The pretense being maintained was that only direct affiliates of government-sponsored, authorized research programs were being allowed on and One such serendipity was the invention of the World Wide Web But that's contradictory - Tim Berners-Lee was a full member of an official research project when he invented the WWW!

kragen 15y ago

I don't understand how he got through this entire post without mentioning AIM, Facebook, Live.com, and Gmail, which are doing their damnedest to make his vision come true.

jaysonelliot 15y ago

The scenario presented here seems to mistake the Web for the Internet. Before the Web was invented, Usenet (and to a lesser extent, WAIS and Gopher) was a thriving protocol, with relatively large numbers of people participating daily. Usenet was my first introduction to the Internet, and for years, it was to me what Facebook is to many people now. There were MUDs where we spent many late hours engaged with other Internet users around the world, and yes, our email systems were on the Internet. Thousands of independent ISPs were thriving before the Web came along, most having gotten their start as dial-up BBSes. Each provided access to a wealth of Internet services. For that matter, hyperlinking was already commonplace in Gopher, and fairly mature in Hypercard. CD-ROMs were introducing rich multimedia experiences before the Web came along, and it doesn't take much of an imagination to move from CD-ROMs and Gopher to something very similar to the Web we know today. It's fun to imagine alternate dystopian histories, but the one described here is far-fetched, to say the very least.