Xanadu

To start off, I thought this reading was much more interesting than the Bitzer piece... just FYI.

This is so cool! People actually had ideas about technologies of the future (unconciously, of course, but still!) This piece was written by Matt Kazmierski, who (at the time in 1996 when this was written) was a senior at U of M. A lot of what he is talking about seems outdated, such as Netscape Communicator. A lot of the explanations he uses wouldn't need to be explained today, either; they are second nature to these generations that have grown up with the technologies and have watched how fast they change and evolve.

What I found most interesting was the history he persents. The early examples of hypertext in the ancient Indian epic present an idea of interwebbing, internetworktivity, web, webs... etc etc etc. Although this and the other examples Kazmierski uses are based in a print medium, they still seem to be a prelude to something much bigger than their society's technologies could handle.

In conclusion, could you imagine if the Internet were actually called the Xanadu? "I was on the Xanadu last night researching for my biology report." "Mom! Get off the phone! I want to use the Dial-up Xanadu!" haha.