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nature of the computer and its capability is not as fixed or as predictable. The
early computers with eight bit processors and four kilobytes of memory have given
way to thirty-two bit processors and sixty-four megabytes of memory. Storage has
grown from thirty- four kilobytes on a five and a quarter floppy to standard hard
drive capacities of four gigabytes. The text based machines from the beginning have
moved to almost entirely graphical interfaces and the newest systems are about to
be wholly network based. Disk operating systems (DOS) became hard drive systems
and now are evolving into network systems. Essentially, in computer technology, we
have come full circle from the pre-personal computer days of mainframes and terminals,
to personal machines with interactive network capability.
So,
what then is the future of the web, the answer is more and more. The nature of the
web has gradually been changing with the introduction of non-academics to the Internet,
it has of course, become largely a means of commercial advertising. But the advertising
has had to fit into the environment in which it finds itself, the competition for
the visitor to come to a site, means that the web site must offer something if it
expects visitors, otherwise, it is just so much hard drive space. This means that
the material on the web has to have something of substance that the visitor can access
or he/she is unlikely to wait for the download. The continued improvement in speed
has meant that the content on the web continues to increase in its volume. More picture,
more virtual reality, and we anticipate more and more use of video.
If
you recall the example of the CB radio I mentioned earlier, if you had experienced
that era, you will remember that volume became one of the serious limiting factors.
The more users, the greater the variety and the slower traffic. Such is the case
on the Internet, but with a major difference, unlike CB radio which relied upon a
fixed technological basis and extensive regulation, the Internet does not have these
limiting factors. Though the government of he United States has on several occasions
considered ways and means of getting some control on the very thing they started,
these attempts have been thwarted. (Just to recall for you, the Internet was developed
by the US department of defence linking universities together when it was worried
about a math and technology gap with the Soviets.)
Computer
technology continues to progress almost unfettered. The only technological problem
has been the economic dominance and amazingly retrogressively popular utilisation
of Microsoftsoftware. The monopoly by Microsoft is a real threat to innovation
and it is to be hoped that the American Justice Department will successfully dash
the strangle hold this company currently enjoys, despite the widespread development
of several highly superior systems to that produced by the ultra conservative Microsoft. |
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