Those of us who joined the Internet tribe in the late 1980's and early
1990's think of Ed Krol quite fondly. He was one of the few people at the
time who could and would explain it all to us at one sitting. He helped
us join and participate so we could change our lives and the world. Much
has changed in the past decade with the Internet and last week he
discussed those changes with the New York Times.
kelly
December 9, 1999
An Early Chronicler of the Internet Reflects on a Decade of Growth
By STEPHEN C. MILLER
Ed Krol was one of the first chroniclers of the Internet. He
helped develop the Frequently Asked Questions format with "The
Hitchhikers Guide to the Internet," posted on the Net in 1987. His
1992 book, "The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog" (O'Reilly &
Associates), was considered the bible for the first generation of
Net users. He has finally written a sequel with Kiersten
Conner-Sax, "The Whole Internet User's Guide: The Next Generation"
(O'Reilly & Associates). Krol is an assistant director of computing
and communications at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where
Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser, was developed. In an
interview over the Internet, he talked about the past decade of
being online.
Q. What is the most significant change in the Internet since you
first started using it?
A. The change from being primarily a collaborative interpersonal
tool to an information service. The major use today is to gather
information from databases on the Web. You get a new prescription,
you run to the Web to read the package insert. You want to know if
I.B.M. went up or down today, you run to the Web. You need a new
coat, you browse through online catalogs.
Q. Did you think the Net would explode the way it has?
A. Not really. I expected conventional explosives, and it has been
the H-bomb. I expected it to be a stodgier facility which would be
used by everyone professionally and for some personal information
gathering, but not as much of the amusement and recreational use as
there is now.
Q. What are the negatives about Net usage today compared with 10
years ago?
A. I can think of two offhand. The first is spam. The second issue
is the quest for big bucks.
The view is if your site is glitzier than your competitors' (or
your ad is), more people will visit (or notice). The problem is
that in 90 percent of the pages out there the glitz adds nothing to
the content and only serves to slow the delivery down and force the
download of all kinds of plug-in extensions to the browsers.
Q. What has disappeared from the Net that you would like back?
A. The sense of community and decorum. I had always hoped that
people would be refreshed that the online community was so much
more stable than the real world and it would continue.
But I think when people are plucking down their own money for a 56k
dialup, they think they have bought 56k of bandwidth anywhere in
the world to waste any way they wish. They feel they have the right
to be uncivil.
I guess I liked a cybervillage and what we have now is cybercity,
with all the problems of the city.
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