In 1994 and early 1995, when there was a lot of excitement about the Information Highway3, it seemed that almost every day one company or another was trying to become part of the plans to build it, to be the first to offer users video through cable4 television, for example, or video-telephone systems.
It was like an exciting dream-small and large companies hoped to make a lot of money with new electronics and ideas on how to build and run the Highway. Everyone wanted to win. They didn't see much of a place for the personal computer in this picture of the future.
Then, later in 1995, people suddenly seemed to notice the Internet. Communication from one personal computer to another-from office to office, home to home or country to country around the world-was clearly an early move toward a future Information Highway. The excitement over building the Highway turned quickly to excitement over the power that people already had through their personal computers on the Internet. It was a welcome change of thinking for Microsoft5, where our thinking and planning was already for “a personal computer on every desk and in every home.”
Plans changed fast at every communications6, computer and software7 company. They dropped their ideas for the Information Highway and started to look much more carefully at the “World Wide Wed8” of personal computers that people were already using. Companies quickly began to make computer hardware and software specially for the Internet, to give users new ways of sending and getting information on almost any subject, of doing business and of making friends, for example.
Internet software is still becoming better and more powerful every day, and in the near future videos and telephone systems will probably run on it, just as people thought when they were making plans for the Information Highway years ago.
The early days of the Internet are like the early days of the California Gold Rush. People will make money in surprising ways.In 1852, about three years after the start of the Gold Rush, thousands of men hoped to find gold and get rich quickly. A man named Levi Strauss opened a store in San Francisco. Twenty years later, when many people were still dreaming of finding gold, another man from Nevada offered Strauss an idea for a new sort of pants9, made of blue “denim10”. They agreed to go into business together—and they got rich, but it wasn't from gold. Since then the Levi Strauss company has sold more than a billion pairs of blue jeans all over the world—blue gold, we could say.
Almost everybody will some day share in the “riches” of the Internet. It will grow so that almost everyone in the richer countries of the world, and large numbers in the poorer countries, will be users. Microsoft is already working toward that goal.
1． Internet n．国际互联网
2． Gold Rush 1850年至1857年美国加州的淘金热
3． Information Highway 信息高速公路
4． cable n．电缆
5． Microsoft n．美国微软公司
6． communications n．通信
7． software ] n．软体
8． World Wide Web 万维网
9． pants ] n．裤子
10． denim n．牛仔裤