20 years in IT history: Connectivity

PS/2, NeXT and OOPs, Netware 3 Archie, Linux, Windows Mosaic, Spam and More, Convergence The Dotcoms, Distributed Compution, XML Wireless and Y2K, Millennial Change and Angst, Blogs Sarbanes-Oxley, Virtualization, ERP Hangover Multicore Processors, The Network, The iPhone

Metcalfe's law is not automatic. As networks grow, the potential to do more for less rises, but this benefit remains theoretical until the network has passed through a phase of greater formalization. As a systems scientist might put it, the standardization of the core goes hand in hand with differentiation of the edge. Each advances the other. No better illustration of this point exists than the two episodes of standardization above, which kicked off the immense flowering of Internet content known as the World Wide Web.

As the Web appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, people became convinced that something revolutionary was under way. CIOs everywhere arrived at work to find a new item in their job description: responsibility for getting their company a website, beginning with registering the company's name as a URL, and weighing the delicate ethics of swiping those of their more laggard competitors.

1994: Spam and More

Connectivity, we learned, has a dark side.