Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia (1997)

This is the true value prop of the internet. Cumulative improvement with expert involvement needed to navigate the top-level terrain. Very Doctorow-an in spirit.<p>The walled gardens inevitably become choked by spam, as they easily classify where the spam targets are.<p>Bring back the Federated Web!

Of the half-dozen worldwide mirrors, none are still up. A shame.<p>One was hosted at TAFE Tasmania, which is a tertiary educational institute for adults (not sure how to express it in international terms: a polytechnic, perhaps. Practical skills-focused learning that people might do instead of university.) My father was a teacher there around that time; I&#x27;ll ask him if he has any memory of mirroring this kind of content.

From the FAQ:<p><i>Q: How can I start an Internet Service Provider (ISP)?</i><p><i>A: Starting an Internet service provider - that can be a daunting undertaking.</i><p><i>My personal advice is - don&#x27;t do it. I say this simply because I think the market is flooded right now. Internet service has become a commodity item. It is very difficult to distinguish yourself from the competition on anything but price. To compete at the $20&#x2F;mo level now prevailing in the consumer industry, you&#x27;ll need a user base of several hundred to run in the black, and who knows how long before you can pay off the initial investment in hardware, which could easily run over $10,000 - not to mention payroll, rent, headaches, etc, etc</i><p>You need to somehow find several hundred people who want to use the Internet. Daunting!<p>(The author was presumably right that the dial-up ISP market was saturated already in 1997, but it’s still neat to see how the Internet went from reaching millions to billions.)