The Internet is currently celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday, marking the installation of the first four network sites on the ARPANet in 1969. But the mass media has only been really interested for about a year, now that the Net has become more visual. It looks cool.
When I open Time magazine to read their latest Internet story, I see terms like "bulletin board" and quotes from phone company PR people, and wonder which Internet they are talking about. It's been years since I logged in to a bulletin board, but I know that they are actually referring to Usenet newsgroups. Especially amusing is Time's attempt to explain the terms "flame" and "netiquette."
Also distressing to us computer science types is the misuse of the word "hacker" by those evening news anchors. "Crackers" are people who misuse computers and Net access, crack codes, or what-have-you. "Hackers" are people who have a knack for cleverly solving computer-related problems, and explore computer systems for the sheer sake of obtaining knowledge.
Then there's Wired magazine. I've come to the conclusion that Wired's purpose is to glorify the image of geeks with money. Take anything you read in Wired with a quart of salt. Wired claims to live on the edge of the Infobahn (or is it the I-way now?). But I have to wonder who is doing their research when I see a rather disturbing reference to "Mosaic home pages" in the magazine's Wired/Tired section (which is another story in itself). The phrase "Mosaic home page" confuses the actors in a
client/server environment. Mosaic is only one of many clients capable of viewing said home pages, which reside on Web servers. Much preferred terms include "WWW home page" or "Web site," and so forth.
Don't get me wrong; I love Mosaic more than anyone. But, as you can imagine or maybe have experienced, when one is close to a project, it is disturbing to see its name used incor-rectly. I believe that NCSA Mosaic is directly responsible for the present media blitz, and I'm proud to be a part of it. It should be noted, however, that many of the pure text offerings of the Internet have been around well before graphical browsers. Now that the Net has a new image, old ideas and projects are getting a second look. But they are often presented in a context that implies Mosaic is a part of them. That puts the members of the Mosaic project in an awkward position, with respect to the rest of the Internet community.
This issue of the Banks is somewhat "Mosaic-saturated," as Doug Beeferman, our editor, put it. Doug overviews Mosaic and the Web in our cover story; Chris Trimble discusses the future of mass media and information technologies; and we even interview Kim Stephenson, one of Mosaic's developers. Needless to say, I've been assured that our newsletter is light on hype and heavy on content.