The video-heavy, much vaunted Web 2.0 advances of the last couple of years were made possible at low prices to consumers because the speculative overbuilding during the bubble era created massive overcapacity that made bandwidth cheap and abundant. It's now all being consumed. If network neutrality proponents have their way the Internet may be frozen in time, an information superhighway with Los Angeles-like traffic delays. [January 2007: Phil Kerpen, Forbes columnist, following a Deloitte & Touche forecast that bandwidth will run out if online video growth continues at current rates. Via Techdirt.]

I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. Here's why there soon will be only World Wide Web ghost pages: Either the Internet's attached computers, operating systems, and applications software will fail to deliver video, or they will succeed. If they succeed, the packet-punctuated pre-Asynchronous Transfer Mode Internet will fail to carry it. [December 1995: Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, says the internet has neither the business model nor the technical infrastructure to support video.]

BOB METCALFE — Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on
the Internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet,
which only just recently got this section here in InfoWorld, will soon go
spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. Here's why
there soon will be only World Wide Web ghost pages:

* Money. Investors poured a lot of money into the Internet during 1995, but
very little leaked out. Everyone will realize this suddenly in January when
financial results are tallied. A hurried search for greater fools to absorb
projected continuing losses won't pan out this time.

* Digital money. As if to make up for the shortage of real money to finance
Internet commerce, several companies have been trying to mint digital money.
They have, however, failed to streamline financial activity — there are now
more, not fewer, middlepersons. Therefore, transaction costs, at 50 cents
each or more, remain way too high. Without efficient micropayments, there
will be little Internet commerce, except, maybe, but probably not, some
advertising.

* Measurement. Advertisers only invest the big bucks in measured media,
where they can have some inkling of how many potential buyers with what
demographics are reading their ads. Even if, as Nielsen just reported, 37
million North Americans tried the Internet in the last three months, we'll
discover in 1996 that the vast majority surfed for several hours and then
went back to watching TV. After the third major corporation stuffs its Web
pages full of dazzling product literature and gets no hits, the Internet's
collapse will begin to accelerate.

* Monopolies. Dazzling product literature and advertising require at least
ISDN speeds. But the major corporations upon which we are relying to upgrade
Internet access past 28.8Kbps are the local telco monopolies, which like our
postal service and public schools have become little more than jobs programs.
The local telcos will escape demonopolization in 1995 and, while they pursue
long distance voice business in 1996, their motivation to lower costs on
high-speed Internet access will wither, fatally constipating the Web.

* Security. Already most TCP/IP networks are not on the Internet but behind
security fire walls, in Intranets. In early 1996, another series of major
security breaches will drive the rest of the productive Internet to safety
and out of reach.

* Compatibility. During 1996, the war for control of standards will tear the
Web. And early initiatives to migrate to Internet Protocol Next Generation
will add to a general loss of compatibility. Such losses, including the
flight to Intranets, will reduce whatever systemic value was accumulating in
the Internet, as governed by the inverse of Metcalfe's Law. (See "Metcalfe's
Law: A network becomes more valuable as it reaches more users," Oct. 2, page
53.)

* Capacity. You've read that the Internet was designed to survive
thermonuclear war, but it's repeatedly been brought to its knees, its
circuits choked, for example, by the reaction to one measly jury verdict in
Los Angles. The Internet is intermittently overloaded, and the TCP/IP
architecture doesn't deal well with overloads. Furthermore, the Internet's
naive flat-rate business model is incapable of financing the new capacity it
would need to serve continued growth, if there were any, but there won't be,
so no problem.

* Privacy. Internet backlash among professional paranoids will break into a
full collapse after a series of well-publicized privacy violations instigated
by the professional paranoids themselves for our own good.

* Video. One of two bad things will happen with video over the Internet
during 1996.

Either the Internet's attached computers, operating systems, and applications
software will fail to deliver video, or they will succeed. If they succeed,
the packet-punctuated pre-Asynchronous Transfer Mode Internet will fail to
carry it. In either case, without video the Internet will lack the energy
needed to sustain its current expansion.

* Pornography. The Internet traffic carrying arguments about pornography on
the Internet will during 1996 swamp the actual pornography, so even the most
sophisticated Web search engines will too often fail to find any. What
quicker road to collapse?

So, in 1996, CD-ROMs through Federal Express will emerge as the information
superhighway. Instead of an Internet brimming with Web pages under
construction, too few of us will haunt ghost pages.

I hope I'm not being too negative. Tell me if you think so.

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