FeatureFeatureIn just a few short years the Internet has been transformed from the secret hiding place for the worlds computer nerds, academic anoraks and parts of the US military, into a global communications tool of millions. With an estimated 50 million people now connected, and a growth rate in the region of 10 per cent a month, this popularity hasn't gone unnoticed by either the media or the powers that be. The media has apparently gone off on a crusade to expose both the Internet and the people who use it as evil distributors of pornography, corrupters of public morals, anarchists, closet terrorists or drug pushers.
Because of this, politicians and governments here and abroad appear committed to introducing legislation in order to gain some measure of control over the "uncontrollable beast". But the Internet might not be just under threat from these predictable sources. Much bigger threats might be posed by the Internet itself: increasing commercialisation, decreasing bandwidth, dilution of useful information among pointless drivel, and fragmentation of the Internet into a number of separate on-line services which are circling like vultures ready to pick at its virtual bones.
Davey Winder has been investigating.
In this
special WWW version of a feature that first appeared in the
July 1995 edition of PC Pro, we look at the following areas
of concern:
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