Who needs ‘internet’ when we have fax? An ‘expert’s’ view from 1996

This article, written by a computer consultant to golf clubs, was published in Golf Club Management in March 1996

Permit me to be cynical as I attempt to provide answers to the many questions that I am asked about internet — ‘The Net’! Please prove me wrong someone, but surely we cannot be expected to take this thing seriously?

Remember those cafés in the late 70s and early 80s that served you coffee as you played Pacman or Star Trek at tables with built in games screens? Well, now they have been resurrected but under the guise of computer consoles connected to telephone lines. People actually spend their time and money in these establishments clicking through menus and reading all sorts of things that they never knew before, all sorts of things that they couldn’t have lived without now that they know; coffee going cold in one hand and an over heated mouse in the other.

Internet is all about communication, one computer to another, or to be more precise one to another umpteen million all over the world connected to a network by telephones and each with its own unique address. With the internet it is possible to send messages called e-mail (electronic mail) to total strangers thousands of miles away. Fascinating! It is also possible to trawl through masses of data stored on even bigger computer systems covering topics ranging from Astrology or Zsa Zsa Gabor. Businesses everywhere are being encouraged to put their messages on the screen for all to see and if they don’t they are looked down upon as being something rather inferior because all their competitors are doing it, or so the sales patter goes. Even the Church of England has its own section for reasons known only to man.

So organisations are being forced into conforming and individuals are considered to be second-class citizens if they don’t surf (as looking through the internet is called – what wally came up with that one?) Who benefits from all this? As a parent I worry about the pressure to be normal and as a computer consultant advising golf clubs I remind them that they run a golf club and not a university research department.

The hand-held telephone, invented as long ago as 1876, will remain the prime instrument for person to person communication and companies will transmit urgent documents by fax. Multi-nationals may even send data files around the world by modem. So who needs internet?

If you‘ve got a dripping tap you look for a plumber in Yellow Pages, if you want cheaper car insurance you ask your broker, if you’re going to the theatre and want to know what’s on you look in the local evening paper. How often do you use Teletext and whatever happened to Prestel, the network system available in every library until they began to realise just how much it was costing?

The bottom line of course is profit, as always. It costs to go on the net. It costs to use the net. It costs even more if you want to access the really interesting bits. Microsoft naturally benefits from the sale of suitable communications’ software and Windows and network providers rent out access time at whatever cost per month plus hourly rates. Hardware must be powerful. PCs will need a modem, at least a 486 processor – preferably a quick one, lots of hard disk capacity and substantial memory. At the end of the day, once the novelty has worn off, will users get value for money from their substantial investment or will it all just become another passing phase?

In conclusion, I don’t believe the hype. I think that I can live without gazing into cyberspace, wherever that may be. I believe that we are being conned into using something that is nothing more than a craze, like skateboarding or riding mountain bikes. No doubt a number of computer experts will be mortified by my remarks and even more will accuse me of scare mongering.

But perhaps, perhaps, there are lots more ordinary folk reading this who are breathing a sigh of relief and thinking ‘thank goodness for that’.

GCM MARCH 1996