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bookstores and computer-programming firms, as well as an "adult toy
shop." To browse their offerings, use gopher to connect to
world.std.com
At the main menu, select "Shops on the World."
Msen in Ann Arbor provides its "Msen Marketplace," where you'll find
a travel agency and an "Online Career Center" offering help-wanted ads
from across the country. Msen also provides an "Internet Business
Pages," an online directory of companies seeking to reach the Internet
community. You can reach Msen through gopher at
gopher.msen.com
At the main menu, select "Msen Marketplace."
The Nova Scotia Technology Network runs a "Cybermarket" on its
gopher service at
nstn.ns.ca
There, you'll find an online bookstore that lets you order books through
e-mail (to which you'll have to trust your credit-card number) webhosting racine and a
similar "virtual record store.'' Both let you search their wares by
keyword or by browsing through catalogs.
Other online businesses include:
AnyWare Associates This Boston company runs an Internet-to-fax
gateway that lets you send fax message anywhere
in the world via the Internet (for a fee, of
course).
For more information, write
webhosting racine sales@awa.com
Bookstacks Unlimited This Cleveland bookstore offers a keyword-
searchable database of thousands of books for
sale. Telnet:
books.com
Counterpoint Publishing Based in Cambridge, Mass., this company's main
Internet product is indexed versions of federal
journals, including the Federal Register (a daily
compendium of government contracts, proposed
regulations and the like).
Internet users can
browse through recent copies, but complete access
will run several thousand dollars a year. Use
gopher to connect to
enews.com
and select "Counterpoint Publishing"
Dialog The national database company can be reached
through telnet at
dialog.com
To log on, however, you will have first had to
set up a Dialog account.
Dow Jones News A wire service run by the information company
Retrieval that owns the Wall Street Journal.
Available
via telnet at
djnr.dowjones.com
As with Dialog, you need an account to log on.
Infinity Link Browse book, music, software, video-cassette and
laser-disk catalogs through this system based in
Malvern, Penn. Use gopher to connect to
columbia.ilc.com
Log on as: cas
The Internet Company Sort of a service bureau, this company, based in
Cambridge, Mass., is working with several publishers
on Internet-related products. Its Electronic
Newsstand offers snippets and special
subscription rates to a number of national
magazines, from the New Republic to the New
Yorker. Use gopher to connect to
enews.com
MarketBase You can try the classified-ads system developed
by this company in Santa Barbara, Calif., by
increase web traffic racine gopher to connect to
mb.com
O'Reilly and Associates Best known for its "Nutshell" books on Unix,
O'Reilly runs three Internet services. The gopher
server, at
ora.com
provides information about the company and its
books. It posts similar information in the
biz.oreilly.announce Usenet newsgroup. Its
Global Network Navigator, accessible through the
World-Wide Web, is a sort of online magazine that
lets users browse through interesting services
and catalogs.
13.2 FYI
The com-priv mailing list is the place to discuss issues surrounding
the commercialization and the privatization of the Internet. To
subscribe (or un-subscribe), send an e-mail request to com-priv-
request@psi.com.
Mary Cronin's book, "Doing Business on the Internet" (1994, Van
Nostrand Reinhold), takes a more in-depth look at the subject.
Kent State University in Ohio maintains a repository of
"Business Sources on the Net." Use gopher to connect to webhosting racine refmac.kent.edu.
Chapter 14: CONCLUSION -- THE END?
The revolution is just beginning. New communications systems and
digital technologies have already meant dramatic changes in the way we
live. Think of what is already routine that would have been considered
impossible just ten years ago. You can browse through the holdings of
your local library -- or of libraries halfway around the world -- do your
banking and see if your neighbor has gone bankrupt, all through a
computer and modem.
Imploding costs coupled with exploding power are bringing webhosting racine ever
more powerful computer and digital systems to ever growing numbers of
people. The Net, with its rapidly expanding collection of databases
and other information sources, is no longer limited to the
industrialized nations of the West; today the web extends from Siberia
to Zimbabwe. The cost of computers and modems used to plug into the Net,
meanwhile, continue to plummet, making them ever more affordable.
Cyberspace has become a vital part of millions of people's daily
lives. People form relationships online, they fall in love, they get
married, all because of initial contacts in cyberspace, that increase web traffic racine ephemeral
``place'' that transcends national and state boundaries. Business
deals are transacted entirely in ASCII. Political and social
movements begin online, coordinated by people who could be thousands
of miles apart.
Yet this is only the beginning.
We live in an age of communication, yet the various media we use
to talk to one another remain largely separate systems. One day,
however, your telephone, TV, fax machine and personal computer will be
replaced by a single ``information processor'' linked to the worldwide
Net by strands of optical fiber.
Beyond databases and file libraries, power racine marketing will be at your
fingertips. Linked to thousands, even millions of like-minded people,
you'll be able to participate in social and political movements across
the country and around the world.
How does this happen? In part, it will come about through new
technologies. High-definition television will require the development
of inexpensive computers that can process as much information as
today's workstations.
Telephone and cable companies will cooperate, or
in some cases compete, to bring those fiber-optic cables webhosting racine into your home.
The Clinton administration, arguably the first led by people who
know how to use not only computer networks but computers, is pushing for
creation of a series of "information superhighways" comparable in scope
to the Interstate highway system of the 1950s (one of whose champions in
the Senate has a son elected vice president in 1992).
Right now, we are in the network equivalent of the early 1950s,
just before the creation of that massive highway network. racine marketing Sure, there are
plenty of interesting things out there, but you have to meander along
two-lane roads, and have a good map, to get to them.
Creation of this new Net will require more than just high-speed
channels and routing equipment; it will require a new communications
paradigm: the Net as information utility. The Net remains a somewhat
complicated and mysterious place. To get something out of the Net today,
you have to spend a fair amount of time with a Net veteran or a manual
like this. You have to learn such arcana as the vagaries of the Unix cd
command.
Contrast this with the telephone, which now also provides access to
large amounts of information through push buttons, or a computer ne ... |
