time-internet - Flipbook - Page 1
The world's largest
computer network, once
the playground of
scientists, hackers and
gearheads, is being
.overrun by lawyers,
merchants and millions
of new users. Is there
room for everyone?
By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT
HERE WAS NOTHING VERY
special about the message that made Laurence Canter and
Martha Siegel the
most hated couple
in cyberspace. It was
a relatively straightforward advertisement offering the services
of their husband-and-wife law
firm to aliens interested in getting a green
card-proof of permanent-resident status
in the U.S.The computer that sent themessage was a perfectly ordinary one as well: an
IBM-type PC parked in the spare bedroom
of their ranch-style house in Scottsdale,
Arizona. But on the Internet, even a single computer can wield enormous
power, and last April this one, with
only a tap on the enter key, stirred up
an international controversy that
continues to this day.
The Internet, for those who are
still a little fuzzy about these
things, is the world's largest computer network and the nearest
thing to a working prototype of
the information superhighway. It's
actually a global network of networks that links together the large
commercial computer-communications services (like CompuServe,
Prodigy and America Online) as well as
tens of thousands of smaller university,
government and corporate networks. And
it is growing faster than O.J. Simpson's
legal bills. According to the Reston,
Virginia-based Internet Society, a private
group that tracks the growth of the
Net, it reaches nearly 25 million
computer users-an
audience
roughly the size of Roseannes-and
is doubling every year.
Now, just when it seems almost
ready for prime time, the Net is being
buffeted by forces that threaten to destroy the very qualities that fueled its
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