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An interesting look back at some observations John Cash made a year ago (Cash's quotes are in white).

Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 14:07:28 -0500
From: shaithis
Subject: Heheheheh

was reading your archives (I started at july 96 and have been working my way up. Figured I should learn a little history since I joined the quake scene sometime around may 97). Anyway, I stumbled upon this little piece by John Cash, and thought it might be cool to re-run it now, at the end of '97, and compare what happened with what he said.

Take a look, let me know what you think. :)

My predictions for 97
---------------------
Hey, why not? Does anyone care? Maybe not... but here's a few SWAGs for the new year:

1) Network Computer:
(aka Web TV)
they'll flop again and again until people learn. Just like diskless workstations...they're a really good idea... for somebody else - *I* need  a real machine.

Mr. Cash hits the nail dead on with this one. People want pc's they can play with and customize and add their own sounds/programs/etc too (this is especially big at corporate offices, where everything else is so faceless that ppl rely on their computers for personal expression). Unfortunaely, big corporate offices were what the network computer was targetted at.

2) DVD:
(whaveter the hell it stands for these days)
It will be a success... eventually. They've botched any chance of a "take the world by storm" launch with all the public squabbling, but it's good technology and will make it despite them.

Again, correct. I work for an ISP/computer store doing web design. We sell a compaq presario with a 2x dvd drive in it. MOTHER OF GOD. Full screen 640x480 video/sound with no loss of framerate and no skipping? It's like a 24x cdrom only better. :)

3) Cable modems:
flop. Cable companies can't even keep a unidirectional broadcast up reliably; who expects them to do better with point to point bidirectional data? not me; I love my DSS!

Here is mr. Cash's only mistake. Cabe modems are selling like wildfire because, for the money, they blow internet connections away. Any technology that costs 29 bucks a month and delivers a minimum of 512kps can't be bad. :) They're coming to my area in ist quarter 98 and you can bet yer ass I'll be getting one.

Altho wireless (satelite or otherwise) internet is coming too, and sounds promising.

4) 56kbps modems:
(or whatever the next step is after the 33.6kbps is) they'll have the usual initial compatability problems and lack of ISP support, but they'll do great. What is there to compete? Everything else either costs a lot more or just isn't going to work that well.

they're doing pretty well now. I have to wonder what the future holds for modems, with higher bandwith opportunities becoming less expensive.

5) The Internet
No, there isn't going to be a "crash to end all crashes". Will there be outages? yes. Will there be slowdowns? yes. BUT... problems will be fixed and capacity increased because Corporate America (aka them, aka the guys with all the money) need it to keep working now.

I haven't seen any significant slowdowns (cept the 'internet brownout' caused by the q2 demo ;) Looks like they fixed the problem before it became a crisis. Granted there are still crashes and slowdowns, but generally not on a global or even national scale.

There ya go. PLEASE don't flood me with email about this. Agree or disagree to your heart's content, but I'm not trying to start anything here. Just felt like taking a few pot shots at the near future.

Overall pretty accurate, except for the cable modem thing. Yet another proof that the guys at id are ahead of their time. ;)

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