Flux
Poor Posturing: Republican New York state Senator William Sears has become the latest and most ambitious public figure to jump on the AIDS-technology-pedophilia bandwagon. Earlier this year, he proposed legislation that would make it a felony to "conduct sexual communications" with a minor over online networks. Pedophiles are "enticing unsuspecting minors onto some dark and dangerous detours off the information superhighway," the senator warned, oblivious, it seems, to the concept of unfettered speech and the unfettered fun of identity hacking. These lecherous perverts, Sears continues, "have moved from the playground to the Internet." Well, we certainly hope so: it's a lot easier to bozofilter a pervert in cyberspace.
The Revolution Begins at Home: The NPD Group reports that the average online family has a head-of-household six years younger than the national average (34 instead of 40) and earns an income 77 percent above the national average.
The Looming E-Money Wars: MasterCard and Netscape recently announced they are working on a secure system for online commerce. Visa and Microsoft are already hard at work. That leaves American Express and the University of Illinois to compete in the e-money standard wars.
It Couldn't Last Forever: Maybe the days of exponential growth are over. Win Treese's latest Internet Index is out, and the news is mixed: The World Wide Web grew by a healthy 1,713 percent in 1994, but that figure is way down from 1993, when it grew 443,931 percent. The number of countries connected to the Net grew at a respectable, if slower, rate: from 137 in 1993 to 159 in 1994. For more info or to subscribe to the Internet Index, send a message saying "subscribe internet-index" in the body to internet-index-request@openmarket.com. z Random Joke Meme: The message on Jean-Paul Sartre's answering machine: "I'm not here. You're not here. There is no message. There is no beep."
Bobbing for Apples: The introduction of Microsoft Bob, a Windows-based interface application intended to make the computer easy to use (sound familiar?), was greeted (not surprisingly) with almost universal groans by industry insiders and power users. The folks at Microsoft expected as much, and are pointing Bob at first-time technophobic users, also known as new users frustrated with Microsoft's still-pretty-bad Windows. Many expect Bob, with it's too-cute cartoon "agents" and its Silly Noisy Computer environment, to wear thin after a while. "It assumes the consumer is an idiot," one top industry executive said after the Bob rollout at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. But heed this well-worn reminder: no one ever got rich overestimating the American public's intelligence. After all, The Bridges of Madison County (one of Bill Gates's favorite books) is still lurking about on most of the major bestseller lists.
alt.scientology.censor: anyone posting on alt.religion.scientology had better tow the line, or risk falling prey to a cancelbot, originating from netcom.com, that deletes messages critical of the church.
Way Too Many Platforms: You can learn a lot hanging around the game booths at CES. The most common gripe from people creating games, and other new media titles has to do with platform-creep. Everyone is looking toward Christmas '95 and seeing disaster. Too many platforms, and not enough critical mass on any of them to support a robust software environment. "Let's fast forward to Christmas '95," one senior executive said at the show. "The average consumer is going to be bombarded with advertising screaming Ultra 64 (Nintendo), Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, and even the 3DO player. What is he or she going to buy? Probably nothing." Or maybe computers.
