From 1995, here is an amazing prediction of the web-based future yet to come: However the key feature of this column was commenting on the numerous demos of web browsers and web server products shown as this industry event. There’s some amazing IT industry history in this column from 21 years ago about Microsoft Bob, Windows 95 (which was yet to launch later that year) and IBM OS/2, which ” … was demonstrated doing more things at once than I would ever want to do”. “At Demo 95, it became clear the Web is our next generation Operating System” This was written a few months before Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was launched in August 1995. Searching in Google Books (awesome for tracking down quotes in archived magazines and periodicals) I think this column, from February 27 1995, might have been the source referenced in Fire in the Valley. Remember in 1995 we had only just seen a year of NCSA Mosaic which was launched in September 1993, and Netscape Communicator had only just been launched in 1994 by Marc Andreessen and company after leaving NCSA. His comment about the browser becoming the next operating system platform that was mentioned in Fire in the Valley I think is far more interesting than the above prediction because in early 1995 that would have been an incredibly bold and forward looking statement. Metcalfe has made a number of predictions in the past that turned out to be far from the mark, including the prediction in his column in Infoworld, Dec 4th 1995, that the internet would implode in 1996 (for more, see section on his Wikipedia entry): I’m not sure if this was a direct quote from Metcalfe or just dramatization based on known facts, but there’s a passing note that Metcalfe commented that the web browser would become the operating system platform of the future (my paraphrasing). In the book ‘ Fire in the Valley‘ covering the history of the development of the PC (which I’m still reading for the first time, I’m down to the last couple of chapters in the 2nd Ed) towards the end of the book discussing The Browser Wars there’s an interesting passing comment about Bob Metcalfe and web browsers.
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