Internet growth (dull, dry static print) has exploded astronomically since the basic Net was overlaid with the World Wide Web (colorful dynamic visuals). No other technology ever developed this fast.
It took radio 37 years to reach 50 million listeners. Even television took 17 years to reach the same audience.
The Internet itself was around for three decades and never did reach 50 million.
But the World Wide Web (WWW) captured the same number of people in just over three years. Nothing else on this planet at least, has reached an audience of 250 million so quickly.
Is this a sign of things to come? The next hot communications device? Digital cell phones can do wonders. Soon they will carry video like they now carry voice and text. Right after that you will be able to plug your 10-ounce videocamera into the base of your phone and broadcast around the world over the WWW for little cost. Your still photo digital camera take a picture of your kid catching a fish and have the picture in grandma's home on another continent before your offspring can get the hook out of the fish's mouth.
Look how "Instant Coffee" captured the world. That was the start. From now on if you can't get the technology you want NOW, you'll switch suppliers.
With 250 million people (about four percent of the current earth population) now on the Internet/WWW, you can see what anguish (for the know-nots) and ecstasy (for the knows) has done for computer growth. Imagine a planet with ONE BILLION people on the Internet/WWW regularly. This level will be likely be reached before Year 2005 or earlier. Numbers have been doubling every year, starting in the days of early adapters and hackers. Many businesses staked a claim in the new bonanza as the third millennium approached. From here on in the WWW will be essential to economic survival. My 1998 comment still holds:
If you don't become part of this bulldozer of change, you're going to be part of the road..
My estimate of an Internet/WWW audience of one billion is not an idle guess. Prices have been dropping like stones while stock in web-based companies have been rising like a hot air balloon during a cold dawn. Computers are becoming affordable everywhere. Some are now under $500. Some companies GIVE THEM AWAY, when you sign up for the Internet service for three years. Service averages around $20 a month.
The lower prices and technological advances that will be spawned by increasing participants will cause even more price declines as production of parts shoots upward and prices dive again.
Another factor now cuts into the cornucopia. The microchip continues to fertilize early adapters who got in not on the ground floor (that saying is so 20th century) but on the excavation for the 21st century, and who are now upgrading. Big time!
Many computer buffs that got going early have done well financially. When they start laying out big dough for Apple Super Computers with their billion-calculations-a-second-speed and the extraordinarily spectacular Cinema Display Screens, another plateau will be created.
There are now numerous markets in the computer field. All points on the economic spectrum can now find their level. This is merely the beginning.
Prepare for the miracles to come.
