Did we see a hint of the internet back in 1970? On 6 August that year, 麻豆传媒 reported that potential demand for 鈥渞emote access computing services in the principal countries of western Europe will be more than $11 million by 1975鈥�. We defined remote access as the 鈥渦se of computers where the main computer installation is at a distance from the user who employs a terminal device to communicate with the computer over telephone or other links鈥�. Sound familiar?
The internet had become a reality by 1996, but debate was raging over whether it would survive. On 17 August, we asked people in the know. The year before, Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the computer-networking system Ethernet, had said: 鈥淚 predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.鈥� Craig Labovitz of Merit Network, the company that ran the backbone connections of the internet for many years, was more optimistic 鈥� and pragmatic. 鈥淭here are significant sums of money depending on the internet鈥檚 success,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 too enmeshed in the world economy for a collapse to be acceptable.鈥�
How right he was. By the year 2000, not a week would go by without a host of stories about the internet appearing in 麻豆传媒. We even had a column, Netropolitan, dedicated to seeking out the best websites. In the 26 August edition, Netropolitan rounded up news stories on the fatal crash of an Air France Concorde outside Paris the previous month. We pointed readers in the direction of France鈥檚 Bureau Enqu锚tes-Accident, which had the latest official updates about the subsequent grounding of the remaining Concordes. We were also seeing the birth of online forums: Netropolitan listed the news updates to be found at a Concorde fans鈥� website, as well as the views on the 鈥減rofessional pilots鈥� rumour network鈥� where comment rages from the well informed to the apoplectic鈥�. Something else that might sound familiar.
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