Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Dayton's oriental rug departments in downtown Minneapolis Saint Paul and at the Southdale Brookdale and Rosedale homestores 6 minutes now past 11. Good morning. Welcome to. Midday. I'm going to set up public radio. I'm Gary Acton. Beach Boys have been called lots of things musical Geniuses pop icon's how about adding futurists to the list? Apparently all kinds of people are learning how to surf the Internet is booming Commerce department is out with a new report that traffic on the Internet is now doubling every 100 days 62 million Americans are online 100 million people around the world. And apparently we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Second network is being launched that will be much much faster than the existing internet opening a whole new world of change. The day we're going to peer into the future and we invite you to come along our guests. This hour is time to lochrie the managing editor of Internet World magazine. Mr. Locke rejoins us from his office in New York. The Brave New World of the internet is our subject this hour, and if you have a question or a comment we invite you to give us a call Twin City area number is 227-6002 to seven. 2000 if you're calling from outside the Twin Cities, you can reach us toll-free at 1 800 to +422-828-227-6000 or one 800-242-2828 the future of the internet that's her subject this hour on midday and down to lochrie. Thanks for joining us this morning. Good morning. How are you? Just fine. The Commerce Department reports that the internet is growing faster than any other previous technology. Does that square with the with what you know about it? Yeah, I can't say that I was around when the TV was coming on the scene, but we're certainly seeing phenomenal growth with the internet and I think with the internet you've got people already owning computers. It's not like the older days where people had to actually go out and get radios or TV to take advantage of a new technology. Now, they've got the technology and it just need to get themselves connected which doesn't require an awful lot of work. I saw some statistic indicating that just for you. Years ago they were only like three million people on the internet. Now there's as we say a hundred million around the world. Does that sound about right around and got their own different numbers, but the bottom line is it's been phenomenal growth of a brief history lesson. If you will end in the internet, they should we got it stored in academe in the late sixties is an email Network. And what's really been the boom on since 1993-1994 has been the World Wide Web the creation of a program called Mosaic at the University of Illinois, which later gave rise to the Netscape browser, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with and and has produced an awful. It's caused companies everywhere to go onto the internet with their information than to try to sell things. Just get the word out about whatever they're doing. Just companies peoples as well on this has become a big place for hobbyists and put up all sorts of information about the So what's happened here in the last few years is that it's become a lot easier to find the things that were on the Internet. Is that kind of the long and the short of it all robots with the World Wide Web you got something more than email. You got you got pictures and text and you got video and you got audio so you're really getting much more of a multimedia experience, which is brought more people into it wanting to know what this is all about really is remarkable. If you consider just four five years ago. No one knew what it was and today you can't go anywhere without seeing a URL written on the side of a of a busser or billboard somewhere. in general what are people using the internet for research purposes just for Commerce for yeah communication. What were they use it for? Well, I think first of all communication has to be right up there. I mean, it's still an email network is still a very cheap way to send information back and forth to people especially if they are in remote locations that's cheaper than a long distance call and then research on blood of the studies. I've seen show that two people will go on to the internet to look for almost anything go to a search engine and I've been afraid to return the long list of sites that might have some information about what you want and beyond that you've got professional researchers like the academics or pushing. This is new network that you alluded to earlier who are looking for ways to connect electronically to do some very intense sophisticated scientific research hooking together telescopes and microscopes and all sorts of things. That would have been impossible years ago when they were in the one of them was in Minnesota, and the other one was in Florida really seeing a lot of Very Innovative uses Commerce is coming along. There's probably some people who have wanted to see it come faster, but it's making a quick games and that you have a lot of stores for coming on the internet now Lands End is there and the other big-time catalog makers and people like Macy's FAO Schwarz others retailers are on the internet and trying to sell did you know that they'll mail to you once you log on and type in your credit card number in order to do most people seem comfortable with the idea of ordering via the Internet the whole security issue. We've heard a lot about a sticky issue if there's been a lot of attention to it recently I'd say in the last year the Comfort level has gone gone up dramatically for a lot of people and if you know, if you recognize the argument that when you call up a patellar catalog company of you giving them your credit card number to someone who's just a voice on the other end to or you know, these the eCommerce companies also make the argument that when you go into a restaurant you give the waiter your credit card and he disappears with it for 10 or 15 minutes. There isn't much more of a security threat to typing in your your credit card number and having a go out over the internet. The technology is also improved to sort of scramble those numbers so that they're not easily picked up by somebody who might be hacking away at the internet trying to pick up credit card numbers. So yes, the bottom line is people are still concerned and it is still a barrier to really widespread e-commerce, but I think I think the barriers getting a little bit lower in and more people are getting over it. Now this new internet that that vice president Al Gore was talking about this week that will connect the academic institutions initially. I imagine will filter its way down to the average person sooner rather than later. How will that Affect people in the short-term. It'll be an academic thing. Like I said before they're very interested in when we talked about the internet. We talked about speeds of a common phrases bandwidth. It says how much bandwidth do you have? Your your average listener is probably connecting to the internet over radio of a over a modem that's capable of 14000 bits II or 28000 bits a second if they have a new modem what these guys were talking about it so much more than that. I mean the fastest Network right now is like 622 megabits per second millions of bits and what they're going to build with this Abilene Network. The gore talked about this week is 2.4 gigabit per second, which is just a tremendous amount of information moving very quickly and making it possible safe or rough U2 experience, you know, sort of one of these virtual reality things where you're playing a game and you feel like you're in a cave or in a day. Engine or something like that, which is now possible in an arcade somewhere, but you can't do that if you're not in the arcade and they're trying to I know the gaming industry is very interested in bringing this into your home, but they need to have those Network speeds because right now it just wouldn't be possible over the connections that the average person has it would take so long it so you wouldn't want to be bothered with it and beyond that. I mean there's a lot of other things that companies are very interested in doing more video conferencing linking one Factory in Minnesota to a factory in Wisconsin or something like that right now, you can order the services that can be quite expensive from from Individual companies. If you can do it over the Internet probably save yourselves a lots of money and then you can have you know, sort of an executive meeting with one group of people in one state in another group of people in another state is always has been since the beginning of the commercialization of the internet a lot of interest in movies. Also something that has been a speed issue. If you look at any kind of video clip on the internet nowadays if they're often plagued by technical problems because there just isn't enough speed there. It'll take you forever to download a clipping and when she look at it'll look a little herky-jerky. So everyone is looking forward to a time when they won't be more bandwidth so that these things can go forward. What kind of timeline are we are. We looking at for that in terms of a broader commercial consumer application as opposed to the academic world. Anyone can tell you that for sure. This is certainly an area. We are a technology has moved very quickly of these folks in the academic round were talking about having a system like this working in the next year. But part of what they're going to be doing is solving a lot of problems that need to be answered is how do we use this much speed if the date is moving that quickly to my computer. What do I have to put in my computer or I don't have to adjust my computer in order to actually use that information that's coming in so quickly. Those are all issues that they're trying to solve. So having said that I have a lot of faith that these there's a lot of money behind this. There's a lot of smart people that they're probably work this out. I wouldn't be surprised. If you know, we saw the sort of thing trickle-down in the next two to three years, de la Cree is I guess this hour, he is the managing editor of Internet World magazine and today we are talking about the future of the internet where we are and where we're headed the whole world and Internet is just exploding and if you got some questions or comments, give us a call to 276 thousand. Is there Twin City area number to 276 thousand outside the Twin Cities 1-800. 242-282-8227 6001 800-242-2828 First place with the internet to use HTML going to change any or is it just going to be using the most recent version and I'm just hoping it stays as easy to use for like people who like clubs are just an individual. It doesn't have to be done by corporate to write a web page. Right? I don't know what the plans are for HTML to be perfectly honest. I'm not a programmer. So I don't know exactly progression there in and what's coming. Can you explain briefly time what HT my web page so that you put the links in and the you know, the page is formatted in the in in a fashion that it looks you know looks good on your computer screen and it integrates the images and the and the text link show up in a color and you click on them and it takes you to another page and that has evolved over time. It's become more sophisticated better-looking web pages. In terms of actual individual use versus Corporate use in their I have no trouble believing that there will always be an internet that's available to everybody and the isps will continue to was cell 19 internet service providers. Excuse me for 1995 you continue to do that and I think part of what we're going to see with internet to is going from the universities are trying to work with this right now is develop an economic system where you can take advantage of this high-speed connectivity that they're talking about on a peruse basis. So if you want to put on a video show of some sort and you don't want it to be interrupted by other traffic on the network, you have a an ability to buy a certain amount of bandwidth at a particular time and that's guaranteed to you. I think that is part of the way in which the average person will use it. I mean it's almost like subscribing to cable and then paying a little bit extra for a pay-per-view movie on Tuesday night. And I think that is the model that people are looking at this right now the economic model for the internet has been very egalitarian people can get on and basically one packet of information. Your email is broken down into packets one packet looks just like another packet and part of what we'll see what this next Generation internet is an economic system that can discriminate among the packets and can guarantee that packets aren't interrupted. If they're part of a live video broadcast say versus your email which you know, it's not necessary that it's get to the other side and a split second. I can take a couple of seconds. That's really what we're talking about here. We're not talking about delaying someone's email hours were just talking about seconds vs fractions of a second. That's part of the new economics that you're going to see developed that the average person will have to reckon with when that time comes and those services are offered to rest of us. Not just to the University's Fred your next. Hello. I've been using the internet for a number of years and I guess I would be could be characterized as being sort of in the the community networking realm mostly. Interesting that the previous color ask about a protocol issue. I guess I'd summarize my statement is that speed is nice, but there's lots of other things we need and I'm particularly better protocols in applications and I could go into that but I'm curious whether the new internet whether there is a plan for a transition from our discussion of transition from the current Internet to a better internet and some of the things that I would like to see new software and new protocols deal with are you know that the guy obviously the spamming insecurity problems and spoofing and forgeries and all that kind of stuff as well as things like the last mile problem and we're coming batch mode now, you know you call up in you make a call to the internet and you do your stuff and then you get off and then you do it again tomorrow, but the internet can't call you and leave a message that somebody really needs to get a hold of you today and better email for Mats that handle discussions better and on and on and on is is there going to be a new generation of protocols? My understanding is that this is new new network will help to develop something called IPv6 and I'm not a technical expert may know more about technology than I do. I'm an IPv6 is supposed to bring along some of these other ideas about reserving bandwidth and things like that. I don't know how much it does for the security issues that you're talking about the spamming of which is an issue when people get a bunch of email that they don't really want to go to the junk mail system. That is given the nickname spam by internet users or juries is when somebody pretends to be somebody else and send you an email and which is a problem on the internet. I don't know the details of that, but I'm sure and in terms of better software that work is going on independently of The internet to because all of the software vendors are aware of the problems out there and they're working on new versions of email and things like that. And this is not a process, you know, since nobody really runs the internet there. Isn't that I know of any kind of formalized process to to transition from one to the other. This is pioneering some new technologies and hoping that someday they will be used by the rest of us because you had the government involved in running the internet and then what happened we was 1994 the government out of that business for the most part and you have a lot of independent companies now providing these internet connections and so have a lot of loose consorcia of people setting the standards and Making the systems work but it's far from being a synchronized system where you can go to one person and find out you know, what the future is going to bring. Do you think you see the the industry the technology moving back toward more centralization or does it become increasingly chaotic? I don't know if I'd say chaotic the chaos in some way breeds Innovation and that can be a good thing to have more people working on the problem. You're going to get more interesting Solutions and if you leave it in the hands of one particular company, you know that the government did decide under pressure from the telecommunications companies to get out of providing what was known as the backbone system, which was kind of the fastest part of the older internet were talking about now that linked individual that works in different cities and Link City to City to city as you went across Country from California to the east coast and they got out of that business and they were pretty much going to leave it up to the company's and then we seems to you no more and more government activity is this has become more popular among more Americans the government has recognized that there's some political value. I'm sure and in keeping their hand in here and like for instance this year. There's been a lot of attention to the naming. Rules on the internet for instance. You know, I work for internet world. We have the eye ww.com name. I'm sure you guys probably have your you know, Minnesota Public Radio., or something like that. There's been a lot of attention to what will happen to that. There was a contractor that was left in place by the federal government and that contract is going to expire and there were a lot of independent people in the Consortium who were trying to develop a new system. So, you know where to go when you wanted to get another name, you know, you needed another name and it got a little hairy didn't the government now his stuff back then step back into the process and and made some suggestions on where it wants to go. So, well, there are as you say some sense that the you know, there is a need for some sort of centralized control in the government is interested in that in Washington is also quite interested in the Privacy issue and the ownership of data issue and Has I think it's the Federal Trade Commission has started an investigation of what internet sites do with information that you give them like your phone number and your address and your email address? Can I visit a general sense that those things should not be shared with other marketers unless you say so that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable and you know, this is an industry in its infancy and people are trying to figure out what the rules should be pressure question place. Yeah, I guess it's more of a comment. I agree with both the the gas and also afraid I think he was rocking on the limitations of the what's wrong with the Internet for an email is useful, but if you don't talk to a lot of people in the tit what's wrong with the telephone and Research trying to do prefer to go to the library and set up something that where I find I waste a lot of time looking for something with the search engines. I got better things to do with my time and social I guess people get on the internet to talk with people but what's wrong with going out in my experience? It's not a whole lot of Subs. That's it. Okay. Trisha more common has 11 more common attitude than we've been led to believe, huh? I mean, all you ever hear is boy. This is the greatest thing since sliced bread at First Sight is the best thing since sliced bread and certainly there is a lot of hype and there are a lot of things that you may never want to do on the internet. But I mean I would take issue with what you said about going to the library. I mean, I know as a journalist sitting here at my desk I have access to you know, all of the financial filings of the public companies in the country over the internet at you know on Deadline. I can find out what the earnings were of IBM in the fourth quarter and I don't know quite how I would have done that if I didn't have the internet I would have, you know, I just had to ask a librarian somewhere to look it up for me and that would have taken more time than I have. So what about this issue of social isolation? On the one hand, of course the internet literally opens up a whole world of information to you and access to people all around the world, but on the other hand it there's this image of people sitting hunched over their computers in a dark room somewhere kind of typing away and never seeing any other human beings, right? I wouldn't want my little boy spending all his time hunched over his computer and never learning how to play baseball or basketball or spend time outdoors. I think the you know, there is a tremendous opportunity for connectedness. I mean, if you see the sorts of things that have sprung up on the Internet a lot of them not even commercially oriented, but just people reaching out to other people whether they're, you know, suffering from a particular form of cancer or trying to get over the loss of a mother or father or a loved one, you know, they're making connections which might be harder to make in the real world. You know, I know there's support groups a lot of local churches and synagogues and things like that, but here's an opportunity for people to to make connections with those who share their particular interest and of course, we don't just want them doing that. We want them being engaged in their community in the I don't necessarily believe the people who think or bike to say that this will change everything that we do in our lives. I mean, I think that there's a place for e-commerce for people to buy things over the computer, but I think they'll still end up going out to the mall in mixing with other townspeople when engaging in their local community and there was still be schools. I mean, you don't you'll have opportunities to learn things over the internet and maybe take a horse from a distant University that you wouldn't ordinarily have a chance but that's not necessarily going to put the local University out of business. You'll still want to you know support. You know that University that's closest to you and have a chance to attend classes up close, but you know why universities are oversubscribed and you can't get a seat if you have an opportunity to while take the course on the internet and graduate on time. Maybe that's you know, maybe that's a good thing and will help you out with your career plans and such. There's a lot of research being done right now on whether or not learning over the Internet matches up with learning in person. As our guests. This our he is the managing editor of Internet World magazine joins us from New York this morning. We're talking about the internet where it is and where it's headed to use of the internet has just literally exploded in the last few years. The Commerce department is out with a report this week and indicates. The traffic on the Internet is doubled is is doubling rather is doubling every hundred days 62 million Americans online. There's a brand-new faster internet being developed there that will hook up a academic institutions initially. We got to be a great opportunity today to talk a little bit about where the internet is taking us, and if you'd like to join our conversation, give us a call Twin City area number is 227-6002 276 thousand outside the Twin Cities 1-800. +24-228-282-2760 Norwin 800-242-2828 will get the Samara colors in just a moment. Credit problems can happen to anyone medical emergencies job layoffs and unexpected expenses. Don't discriminate no matter what the reason though. It's important to tackle those unpaid bills before they get out of control handle. This is Bob Potter. If you're having trouble coping with too many deaths don't miss out on money this week when attorney Robin Leonard will be here to take your calls somebody Saturday morning at 10 again Sunday afternoon at 5 on Minnesota Public Radio Canada W FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities over the noon hour. Today. We're going off to the Westminster Town Hall forum for a speech by Crystal kuykendall. She's a nationally-known educator and has been specializing in ways to help minority students catch up and keep up in the classroom should be speaking at the Westminster Town Hall Forum over the noon hour today NPR's Holocaust remembrance project is supported by Dain Rauscher Investment Services and Investment Banking helping you achieve your goals Dain Rauscher. Let's make it happen. Weather forecast for the state of Minnesota Sunny for the most part with the Fairly brisk winds. There is a slight chance for some rain in the far north today. But basically Sunny eyes low forties to the low 50s Twin City forecast sunny this afternoon with a high near 50 degrees right now in the Twin Cities. We have a sunny sky and it's 45 degrees. That's how I were talking about the future of the internet joining us from New York time to lochrie the managing editor of Internet World magazine. And again, if you have a question or comment Twin City area number to 276 thousand, I'll try the Twin Cities one. 800-242-2828 Rodger you're up next to a place for personal and public use. Could they possibly use the hardware capabilities of cable TV? Yeah, that's certainly something that's that a lot of people working on right now. It's a very expensive problem though because cable is a one-way technology. And if you're on the internet, you want it to be a two-way connection so that when you're clicking those signals are going back to the computer and you're looking on a different page each time you click her or you're interacting in some fashion. So that's the expensive problem that companies like TCI and some of the other cable Giants have been wrestling with involves putting what's known as switches on the cable, but it's a possibility is a lot of promise there in the speed of available with what are known as cable modems are are quite impressive and could deliver a lot of the video and things that people would like to see so that's certainly a possibility and I think a lot of it comes down to where the demand is and whether or not this is the cable companies, you know, see a financial reward for for doing that in Chicken thigh area early adopters adopters have been like in Cambridge, Massachusetts where there's a lot of computer use with a mighty and other companies in that area. I know that's one place where you can get internet over cable right now, but that's coming along. Do you see the day time when we will be moved away. We won't have to use the boxes anymore of the computer box where whatever information we get will be integrated into one of our regular living situation a lot of interest in doing that. There has been the notion of what's called a network computer as opposed to a personal computer and the network computer would be a lot cheaper and down it would to primarily be a system that would Be used primarily for connecting to the internet. Wouldn't need an awful lot of hard drive space and things like that that you pay for when you buy a computer and there's also this notion of webtv, which a couple of of companies are already on the market with the systems that you can hook up to your TV in order to look at the web and certainly most of the futurist that I read to see some sort of integration occurring there especially for your average person who is just going to want you know to look at the at the world wide web for a certain simpler things like emailing surfing the web going to do something more sophisticated like you no work on an architecture program to design a building with your colleague in Los Angeles or something like that. You're going to need a computer that is capable of cranking away with a sophisticated program, but for the rest of us and then maybe maybe possible to to go with some sort of TV computer integrated. What we see what TV now is is is the movement to digital images on the television digital Technologies welder through sort of coming together there. So I think we will see changes in that regard in the next couple years. There's no question about that. Damn your question for Tom to lock replace that the she could didn't believe that there'd be a use for the internet that at the or that was the gist of her thing. I wanted to give her her another listeners the three concrete examples of things that I think are remarkable about the internet just as they just as a browser. The first one is to be able to find directions from here to somewhere else. It's a possible to put in to a number of different websites the location you're in the one you're going to and then get surface directions turn-by-turn road by road. And then I have it all print out with a map accompanying it and that's a that's a tremendous luxury for people that do, you know want that information on cue the second one is Antibiotics and amateur etymologist various didn't words and and there are dozens literally dozens of dictionaries available on the internet and I with a click of the mouse. I can find things from Italian idioms to Old English to whatever I whatever I want to look at that's that's a tremendous resources the third the third instance was that kind of but a fairly trivial but a friend corrected me one when when I said lay on macduff and he said oh no, that's a that's a Shakespeare and it's at the Expressions lead on macduff and I said, you know, let's find out and in 90 seconds and I had to found a site that had the complete Macbeth play and I had that I did a search on the expression lay on macduff and and I found it the correct the scene and acting and had a print out the to handle now and that is Trivial but Everybody can see that to be able to do that 90 seconds. You certainly can't do that in a library. Any Library study brings up. The question time. Are we developing are we becoming a nation of people who can do and people who can't do in terms of the internet that is to say, is there a widening Rift a gap year between people who are really familiar with the internet somebody like Kim Harrell obviously can use it to his advantage and a lot of people who are at best clumsy and just aren't getting much use out of it and aren't getting any better at yeah. I mean there there's no doubt about that. I mean those numbers you talked about earlier from the Commerce Department, you know, the traffic growth to 62 million people online. If you look at that data closely the people on the internet do right now tend to be richer and more educated than the population as a whole and they also tent A little more computer savvy. So if you've got a computer on your desk, there's a better chance that you're going to be using the internet. If you're doing something else for a living and you're not used to using a computer, then you're not going to be as advantaged by having access to the information on the internet and that's why we see you know, this big push right now by all the politicians to wire up schools by brazing and bring the connections to the people who couldn't necessarily, you know, Afford a computer or connection even at nineteen ninety-five a month. It's it's an expense for a lot of people in this country and computers have gotten a lot cheaper but it's still even if you get one for $700 then that's a lot of money for a lot of family. So no doubt about it. We got an issue there and it's something that you know, Gordon Clinton talk about the fibroids make ultimately help us with, you know, maybe what we talked about earlier sort of the integration with television because there is so high penetration of television in this country and the internet is somehow linked to your television. Maybe that's how we get in get this power into the hands of people who don't have as much money or as much computer know how do you see the internet eliminating lots of jobs in this country? I would think as Internet Commerce grows there would be less and less need to Well go out to the stores to do your shopping which in turn would eliminate a lot of retail sales jobs and and on and on and on it before I don't see this shutting down the shopping malls and things like that. I mean, I think you know where it where it does have an impact maybe instead of calling the 800 number for Lands End I go to the Lands End website and I can actually see, you know a picture of the sweater that I want to buy and you know, possibly at some point in the future as the technology changes. I'll be able to create on a little model of neon the computer screen that has my measurements and stuff and actually see how this thing fits. I mean, these are the sorts of ideas that the software companies are working on and then what and then that means that some of the jobs are more technical than than the phone answering jobs. So yes, maybe there's some displacement there, but you know, there's also some job creation and on the other side You know, I don't know. I'm not an economist. I don't know what the bottom line impact is. But you know, they're certainly has been a tremendous growth of internet companies or magazine or newspaper writes writes about them an awful lot a lot of startup companies that are going out and hiring people and you know, actually competing aggressively talent to open these companies in to reduce products and services on the internet. So it's helping to drive the economy. That's one of the reasons why you know, the Clinton Administration is so enthusiastic about it because they see it as a big job creator. For decades now has been towards more technical workers at the disadvantage of an unskilled worker and and this is certainly part of that translate. I can't agree is with us. He's the managing editor of Internet World magazine. We're talking this hour about the internet and the future of the internet John your question, please may I have this packet of information. I've been reading up for the last year or two and it has to do with the purchasing for industry and I was wondering how would a guy could a guy actually Market that on the internet but it was all the information right on the Internet or would you use it for a advertisement and then actually send them the package through the mail and also how does a guy go about doing that? Okay, I don't know quite what it is that you're trying to distribute. Can you explain a little better my right now, I work as a distributor and a lot of these purchasing agents for these industries are going through the internet for purchasing or else they're also going into single sourcing where one vendor supplies and with all their needs. Right and I have this packet of information that would describe to him about what single-sourcing is all about and what to watch out for Which is pretty scarce out there thinking industry, right? And if they wanted to find out about that if they access my page could I have all the information right there? And then they have to pay a fee to get on to it or just use it as an advertisement and then they cut the yeah. I would say the simplest thing for you in terms of Labor and time spent on this would be to make the information available. You know that you're not having to duplicate your your page and mail out things to them. I'm trying to think of the way in which you could protect it to get some revenue from it. I suppose you'd really would need to talk to you know, your local internet service provider or whoever hosts the webpage that you've put up on how to do that. I mean there are ways that are out there where you go to a page and it says if you want the information put in your credit card number in the new process the credit card number and then you tell somebody separate URL where they can go to get the information and that way you distributed over the internet, but you make sure that you get paid for it. There is a concern there though. I'm almost certain. Don't want one person to buy it and then duplicated and share it elsewhere. So you would need to talk to your service provider about security methods that you could use to make sure that you know, you didn't sell just one copy cuz you want to sell multiple copies. Lots of people making big money on the internet selling things or is it still kind of trial-and-error process out. There are certain markets that have done fairly well companies that your readers may have your listeners may have heard about you know, amazon.com CD. Now, those are generally regarded as the most talked-about website Amazon sales books over the internet and they're not profitable yet, but they have managed to catch the eye of Wall Street and they had a very successful stock offering in the company's well-funded right now. We even though like I said, I don't think it's that making money but and the search engines that we talked about earlier that you go to in order to look for a website that might be of interest to you they have And very well but selling advertising too. Well companies that want to catch your eye when you're when you're coming there to search and they have also done very well on Wall Street investors thinking that they're going to be the hot side now and into the future. So yeah, there's this is this is a big industry. There's a lot of money in it right now as far as profits are there still coming but the last caller John he be touched on one important part of this which is the business-to-business aspect of the internet know which can be worth a whole lot of money a lot more quickly than you know, snowing a book to somebody if you can create a relationship as the supplier of machine parts and you hook up over the Internet with the Ford or Chrysler or GM and you use the internet to link your computer systems back and forth and you know, they're buying a millions of dollars worth of parts from you over here. That's really Projected numbers are are just tremendous there for internet Commerce sort of thing that you know, the average person would never see would never know about that's where the money gets to be really large Steve your question. Yes. I'd like to come up to the lady earlier who mention it was hard to find things on the internet. I was asked to review a proposal for my company a couple years ago and I was able to access the government site that had all the procurement documents review those and deeper than that. I found some question answers. It indicated. We'd be violating one of the requirements of the proposal and virtually saved us from being disqualified and we've gotten the revenue stream from that that's probably in there three or four hundred thousand or million dollars now, So I've been very pleased with the internet and I find it easy to find things. I don't think it's the least people being isolated at there a PC computer professional in it. And certainly the internet is an indispensable part of my job and I use it at home a lot to as a resource, but it's been my experience that there's a breadth of knowledge on the internet but in like cases, there's not much depth of knowledge. It's a good starting point for a lot of things and would lead on to further research and I guess I'm kind of curious if if You might think that would change if the band was increases in the future. I mean, there's a couple of factors their bandwidth. I think it's probably certainly going to help us. You know, what you find out about something in the perhaps the supporting material that you want to know more is in a multimedia format of some sort of where you're talkin about audio or video or or even though, you know, maybe a virtual reality application of some sort of 3D Graphics possibly. You'll see more of that going up on the Internet is the bandwidth gets better but I think part of what you're commenting on as well as is just the what's the word I'm looking for but you know the look in the feel of a of a webpage. There's only so much information you can put on a computer screen and we always I think we'll have that to deal with in terms of how web pages are presented. And I know that I've heard that criticism before In the same way that television cut everything down to a minute and a half to tell a story of a webpage has to be fairly tight and concise but the one thing that has going for it is this ability to take off to a lot of other different types of documents and then you're right. I think in the future we'll we'll see even more of a different types of documents and no part of this academic efforts internet to talking about in Washington and other places right now is Digital Library technology, which is very impressive research going on there right now in order to do a much better job of taking an inventory of what type of information is out there and making it accessible to people so that they don't have to have the resources of a of the university in their town of the University library, but can get so much more that information over the internet to have a lot of time left, but a couple more questions here, so it was probably two weeks ago now walk That was speaking up a national Press Club and admitted General lack of familiarity with the internet. But he said one of the things that really concerns him terms of information on the Internet is that you never know where it comes from when he would like to see some requirement that people who post material on the internet identify themselves. Are we moving in that direction like that? I mean, this is an open system and part of the beauty of it is is the fact that anyone can get an account to get on him and share information and there's nobody who's policing it in the thing where you have to identify yourself and You know make sure that's your right name and not a pseudonym of some sort. So that will never happen. But I think in terms of businesses doing business on the internet, they trade other good names and say you are starting to see people going to websites that are run by, you know, the respective names and information whether they are, you know, legal sites run by West publishing or news sites run by CNN rabc or things like that places that you know, people recognized as having good names and then have been trustworthy but that's not to denigrate, you know, the lesser-known people out there who are providing a valuable service in their particular area of Interest whether it's you know, like I mentioned before around Community Center have developed around You know getting over a particular disease or or coping with the loss or something like that 30 seconds. Do you think our institutions are up to coping with a dizzying rate of change that the internet is bringing us? Yeah. I mean, I think that they're they're racing to keep Pace. I have a lot of familiarity with universities and businesses and you know if they're all have their eye on the internet and it looking for opportunities for the future and then and there will be things that people are trying that are going to fail but this is a new medium and a lot of a lot of opportunities out there. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you joining us. Okay time to lochrie. Who is the managing editor of Internet World magazine based in New York joining us this hour to talk about the the world of the internet according to the Commerce Department. It's already big and growing literally at a at a phenomenal pace. We appreciate you joining us this hour and will continue in just a moment, Minnesota Public Radio and the Jungle Theater invite you and your family to Holocaust witness, Thursday, April 23rd at 7 at the Fitzgerald theater in St. Paul. 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