overview four ages prehistory bodies scientists digerati prophets IBM 5 Sisters Apple Microsoft other software dot com heroes

four ages The evaporation of the nineties Dot Com Bubble during 2000 marks the end of the second age of the web. Like most communication systems or infrastructures, the web is normalising - about to become as ubiquitous and unremarkable as telephones or television. Before looking at the individuals, institutions and companies responsible for its development we offer a snapshot of the four ages. (As a point of reference there's a separate profile on past communication revolutions.)      Age 1: Wizards, Warlords and the Well The internet (and its most prominent feature, the World Wide Web) began as a private network that linked a small number of institutions, primarily within the public sector. Its use was essentially restricted to aficionados: those with a community of interest and sufficient expertise to handle what most current users of the web would consider to be unfriendly software and expensive hardware. As a sort of private club it was largely self-administered. As we discuss in our governance guide, apart from basic communication protocols there were few rules and exclusion by system operators - wizards - on behalf of the community or the institution was the ultimate sanction against misbehaviour. Some claimed that it was neither possible nor desirable for governments to regulate cyberspace, ignoring latent social concerns and practicalities such as the scope for regulating infrastructure rather than content per se.      Age 2: Colonisation and the Dot Com Development of the browser and global adoption of personal computing took the internet away from the wizards. Business was quick to colonise the web once it became clear that going online was a way to engage with a growing number of people.  As Varian & Shapiro note in their exemplary Information Rules, highlighted in the economy guide, the more people ventured onto the web the more it became attractive to businesses and consumers, encouraging further colonists. Those numbers underpinned the growth of services - hosting, web publishing - to reduce the challenges of going online. Explosive growth - in some countries annual increases in households online ranged from 15% to 40% - ensured growing government involvement, both to address fundamental regulatory concerns and because it is the nature of government bureaucracies to stake a claim in what appeared to be a digital gold rush.  At the same time pundits characterised the web as the basis of a new economy, free from those depressing business cycles or simply a quick way of making a lot of money for little effort. Specialist and general media (and cheerleaders such as NOIE within government) were quick to highlight dot com models. Critical assessment of what some have called the 'Californian Ideology' - that mix of new age infatuation with the emancipatory potential of technology and markets (and a corresponding hostility to government) - was slower to appear.      Age 3: Normalisation Deflation of dot com speculative bubbles across the globe during 2000 marks the beginning of normalisation of the web. To make money online you now need to make it the old-fashioned way, ie work for it. While there will be significant growth in the numbers of people going online, the rates of growth seen in the past are unlikely to be repeated unless telecommunication charges fall and there are improvements in the usability of information devices. At the moment roughly half of Australian households go online, although many don't do so from home. Far fewer businesses, particularly SMEs, are online. There's growing recognition that success online involves attention to particular issues and challenges - we exist to help you meet those challenges - and that having a web site is not an end in itself.  We expect significant growth in the number of business sites, although many will serve as business cards or promotional tools rather than as etailing mechanisms. Government will begin to address usability and content issues, ie focus on service delivery and communication rather than publishing electronic brochures.  Max Weber quipped that there are few 'heroes' in a 'normal' society. Cyberspace may be less exciting but its coverage by a coherent regulatory framework - national and international - will increase. Bad news for wizards; good news for consumers, businesses and lawyers.      Age 4: The Future Readers of our guides to the new economy and being digital will have noticed our skepticism about the more overheated prophecies by gurus such as Negroponte, Rheingold and Gilder. Irrespective of whether technology is available, many predictions about the information society will not come true because they ignore crucial factors such as cost, user-friendliness and need. Our vision of future development of the web is one in which there are improvements - often slow, often unevenly distributed - in the performance of the communications infrastructure: cables, wireless systems, browsers, back-end software such as authentication mechanisms.  While much of the theorising about convergence looks wrong  - don't expect to watch television on your fridge - broadband will have a significant effect on content industries such as film and text publishing, particularly as micropayment and low-cost seamless copyright management systems are implemented.    next page  (prehistory)