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Interesting, because I read his book "The Road Ahead" and a majority of the book is about the information superhighway changing the future. I never had the impr

Interesting, because I read his book "The Road Ahead" and a majority of the book is about the information superhighway changing the future. I never had the impression he thought the Internet was a fad, perhaps you're right in that he was covering their slow development. Or justifying not having it by saying there wasn't anything worth connecting to (at the time.)

shadowofneptune 5y ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/on-ramp-prospects-for-the-information-superhighway-dream/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/on-ramp... https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-04-11-1994101115-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-04-11-19941011... Looks like at the time the interest in the 'information superhighway' from MS was in proprietary services which were more like cable pay-per-view. That the term later was a synonym for the World Wide Web is misleading. I guess similar terms today would be Web3 or Metaverse where lots of industry players agree it is desirable but don't agree on what it would look like. A buzzword.
- serf 5y ago
  >I guess similar terms today would be Web3 or Metaverse where lots of industry players agree it is desirable but don't agree on what it would look like. A buzzword. well the Microsoft attempt was making an AOL-like half-assed contracted ISP (MSN) to compete with Excite/Yahoo/Lycos so they could shove ad-like experiences into peoples browser start page. Let's hope the web3/metaverse turns out a bit more user-oriented -- 90s web companies were brutal.
andrehacker 5y ago
The interesting thing about that book is that there are two versions that are significantly different, the wikipedia page "The Road Ahead (Gates Book)" describes this quite well (20,000 words were added mostly regarding the internet). The original version stated "today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway". Before publication Gates realized the internet was gaining critical mass and he redirected the company to become internet-focused. And then the new version of the book was created.
- treesknees 5y ago
  Aha, that may explain my confusion. It's been years since I've read it, I'll have to dig it out and see which version I have.

shadowofneptune 5y ago

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/on-ramp-prospects-for-the-information-superhighway-dream/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/on-ramp... https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-04-11-1994101115-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-04-11-19941011... Looks like at the time the interest in the 'information superhighway' from MS was in proprietary services which were more like cable pay-per-view. That the term later was a synonym for the World Wide Web is misleading. I guess similar terms today would be Web3 or Metaverse where lots of industry players agree it is desirable but don't agree on what it would look like. A buzzword.

serf 5y ago
>I guess similar terms today would be Web3 or Metaverse where lots of industry players agree it is desirable but don't agree on what it would look like. A buzzword. well the Microsoft attempt was making an AOL-like half-assed contracted ISP (MSN) to compete with Excite/Yahoo/Lycos so they could shove ad-like experiences into peoples browser start page. Let's hope the web3/metaverse turns out a bit more user-oriented -- 90s web companies were brutal.

andrehacker 5y ago

The interesting thing about that book is that there are two versions that are significantly different, the wikipedia page "The Road Ahead (Gates Book)" describes this quite well (20,000 words were added mostly regarding the internet). The original version stated "today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway". Before publication Gates realized the internet was gaining critical mass and he redirected the company to become internet-focused. And then the new version of the book was created.

treesknees 5y ago
Aha, that may explain my confusion. It's been years since I've read it, I'll have to dig it out and see which version I have.