Push Technology
Sometime in 1997, I started hearing about something that's now called "push technology". In particular, a company called PointCast was telling us (the users of the Internet) that we don't need to ask for information anymore -- they could send it to us. In fact, some press articles were hyping push technology as something that would replace the model of web browsing.
I knew in 1997 that push technology was really irrelevant. I don't want information until I ask for it. I don't want it streaming to my screen all the time. There's way too much information out there, and you can't just say that I'm only interested in topics A, B, and C. You can't categorize me and send me content that you think I want. Only I know what I want, and when I want it, I'll ask for it.
I should have made a prediction about the fall of PointCast and push technology in general.
Broadband
By 1999, everyone realized push was dead. The new hype was around a range of high-bandwidth Internet connectivity options collectively called broadband. Cable modems, DSL, and satellite offer significantly higher bandwidth ("fatter pipes") than modems. The hype is that with broadband, bandwidth will be plentiful, so you will move beyond mostly-text web browsing into a wide range of multimedia "experiences".
There will be some set of people who will go for multimedia content. But the really important stuff will remain mostly text: people talking to each other through email, newsgroups, chat rooms, and so on. It takes a minute to write a text email. Do you really want to set up a 3D rendering program and/or video editing studio to compose email? That defeats the purpose -- email is cool because it's so fast. Anyone can compose text. The only people who have the time to compose multimedia messages are the big companies. All that bandwidth is going to be primarily used for selling stuff. And I don't really want most of that content. Multimedia portals? Give me a break. Video shopping? Yeah right. What's really important to me is information, not entertainment.
How important is bandwidth? How will it change our lives? I've had tons of bandwidth for ten years now. T1s? Slow. T3s? Slow. I'm talking about living on the backbone. At both Stanford and Rice, I had a fatter pipe than just about anyone. I've also lived on the other end, with a 2400 baud modem. So I have to say ...
Bandwidth is irrelevant. Really. Granted, a little bit of bandwidth is needed, but it's really not all it's cracked up to be. It won't change your life. Even with the super fast connection I have, it takes a long time loading most commercial sites. They're big. They're slow. And if they're slow now, they're going to get even slower as they sense users have more bandwidth. Since the really important stuff is textual, it's not going to help to be able to download a hundred pages a minute. You can't read that fast. Occasionally you'll be downloading multimedia content, but it's not going to be all the time. Most of the time you spend will continue to be talking to people -- email, newsgroups, chat, and so on -- and for these things, it doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have.
But the leading broadband technologies offer something else -- something that only gets mentioned as an afterthought. You're always connected. You don't have to "dial in" for a while and then "log out". Being on the Internet isn't like a phone call -- it's like having electricity. Always-On is far more important than bandwidth.
Always-On is what will really change the way you use the Internet. I've had Always-On for ten years, except for a few months in 1995. Those months were horrible. I had to dial in, log in, log out, lose my connection, argh! All that takes time. A lot of time. So much time in fact that you behave differently: you schedule your "on-line" time, you start batching things up, you "log in" and do things and "log out". It's like going to the supermarket. Most of you are seeing this from the other direction: it's so natural to batch things up that it may take some time before you get used to being connected all the time. When you're always connected you can think, "oh, I wonder who wrote the song I'm listening to right now," and you can search the web while the song is still playing. When you're always connected you can think, "oh, I wonder if the traffic is bad this morning," and you can check the web. You don't have to wait for the TV/radio news to get to the traffic report. You can get it right now. TV listings. Weather. Traffic. News. Stocks. Movie listings. Horoscopes. Recipes. Repair information. Sports. Tech support. If you think of something you want online, you can get it without waiting.
You may ask, how do you really know that the bandwidth isn't part of this? I know because I've had low-bandwidth, always-on connection for several years. It's not even as fast as a 56k modem, but it's always there. I can see what effect it's had on my life, and it's just incredible. That's why I say it's the always-on aspect of broadband that will really change people's lives.
So I predict that broadband will be here, but the bandwidth isn't the important thing. Latency is somewhat important (and that's why satellite connectivity will die out, except for remote locations). The multimedia "experience" is really an unimportant aspect of broadband. What's really important is being connected all the time. Economics tells us that when something is easier to get, you'll use it more. So expect to use the Internet much, much more when you're always connected. That's what will transform the way people live their lives.