No web growth until Web TV or Internet telephony takes off..

The above title was the forecast of an article published almost 13 years ago.

In December 1996, Georgia Tech Research News published an article on their website that contains some interesting forecasts for the world wide web. It makes a claim that is now very questionable, but in doing so the author recognised a few points that provided major boosts to online activity.

So what does it say?

Well, they started off by saying that the rapid expansion of the WWW may be slowing. Hmm, even we find that somewhat difficult to believe for 1996 - especially as our MD was using the web back then and doesn't recall much stagnation at the time. You have to put it into context of course, as the rate of growth was shown as 5% as opposed to former growth rates of 20% - so on paper you can't actually argue with that being 'slowing'.

A man by the name of James Pitkow said:

It's my belief that we have reached saturation in the initial phase of Web growth as the rate of introducing new users has slowed and the existing user base has matured," he explained. "The users we were seeing a year ago are still there, but the stream of new users that was fueling the demographic changes has slowed.

He went on to say:

Some growth will continue to come from sales of new computers, but Pitkow expects strong new growth in the population of Web users won't occur until new and inexpensive "plug and play" technologies such as Web TV or the Internet phone become widely available.

Some growth? Some? To attribute the future of the WWW to technologies like Web TV or internet telephony was, well, somewhat brave in our opinion. New and inexpensive machinery did arrive, but it was in the form of a trend already being seen at the time - the drop in PC hardware and accessibility to telecoms.

It is intriguing to note that as 'recently' as 1996 some forecasters didn't necessarily see the home PC as being a potential whirlwind of activity for the internet.

He did give one very useful insight though when he said:

"The big switch to the Web started in 1995," he noted. "Those who could join the Web did. Now we will need a big throw of another switch to get a lot of new users. Additional growth will also depend on building the infrastructure by the telecommunications industry and the cable industry."

There can be little doubt that broadband capability had a huge impact on the internet, and it provided a major boost in the numbers of users, so we take our hat off to the man for seeing that. However, to write off generic home users was surely a misjudgement of quite epic proportions? We recall growth continuing and indeed snowballing - modems and 56.6k speeds were acceptable because content at the time didn't really demand much more and you used what you had. Isn't it a fact of life that the more you have of something the more you use of it?

One thing the survey revealed was: "Distrust of those asking for demographic information led many users to avoid Web sites that require registration -- and caused a third of the respondents to provide false information."; so some things seldom change as the number of people that still provide false information has almost certainly increased!

So, why publish this here?

Well, for all we are poking fun (and it is easy to do with the benefit of hindsight, we fully accept that) at parts of the article we did wonder what forecasts others would make in 2009? Think about it for a moment, it's not as easy as you might expect.

When you look at the potential, it all comes down to something that the original article author picked up on - speed of communications. After that, the world really is your oyster. Mobility will continue to thrive at pace and remains the trigger to the true unleashing of the world wide web as we'd like to see it. However, as you'll see in the right hand column, we think it needs a telecoms provider to take a very bold step before the bridge to Utopia Online is carrying the volume it should be.

Try to think about what YOU want from the web in 2022. No, really try.

When we do that we always come up with a common word - freedom. The web has given millions of users a level of freedom, in one way or another, that could never have been imagined 20 years ago. Yet the worrying thing is that with freedom comes monitoring - it always has done and always will. How will your liberty and right to privacy be managed in 2022? We've given an example, albeit a somewhat conspiracy theorists one, that should make you think about what the growth of super digital communications might mean to you.

The world will continue to become a much smaller places and regimes such as those in China, Iran, North Korea etc will relax, or manage, the activity of their residents as they cannot continue to fight against the ever increasing wall of digital progression that eeks its way into their cultures.

We've made a few of our predictions to get you going. See you in 2022 - be gentle!