Cloud computing is definitely a thing now, but it's not new and it's not even novel. Back when people were first learning about the Internet in the 1990s, every diagram that one saw showing how the Internet worked had a big cloud in the middle. That cloud represented the diverse links, routers, gateways, and protocols that passed traffic around in…

This roundtable report draws on recent developments and trade press articles to show the trends and drivers that are redefining the fundamental conditions and relationships of markets, organizations, and social relationships. The report is divided into four main sections. In the first, "The New Competitive Landscape" brought on by networked…

Today's information infrastructure provides access to a growing array of software and services for education. As both the capabilities of technology and the number of its uses grow, the need to set national policy for computer networking has become increasingly apparent. The High Performance Computing Act of 1991 established government support for…

This book provides an overview and status report on the progress made in developing the National Research and Education Network (NREN) as of early 1991. It reports on a number of investigations that provide a research and policy perspective on the NREN and computer-mediated communication (CMC), and brings together key source documents that have…

Starting in the 1980s the online world has seen two models: the French model, Minitel, and the American model, Internet. At the end of 1995 the Minitel network was the biggest and oldest online service with 7 million users and 20,000 service providers; one year later, the Internet arrived. Tomorrow's online model will need to be: as familiar to…