Now, roll your shoulders back. Now, with the more liberal regulative environment, it is a mere question of time until the technology is found. Cable companies simply did not invest in developing the technology. Actually, most consumers single out bad customer relations as their biggest problem with the cable companies — rather than technology. Cable users engage specially customized LANs (Ethernet) and the hardware is expensive (though equipment prices are forecast to collapse as demand increases). A bit less than 50% of all users are men but they are responsible for 60% of the activity in the net (as measured by traffic). Men prefer information, either due to career requirements or because knowledge is power. This may change only due to presidential initiatives to bridge the «digital divide» (from Al Gore's in the USA to Mahatir Mohammed's in Malaysia), corporate largesse and institutional involvement (e.g., Open Society in Eastern Europe, Microsoft in the USA). There is no point in investing in temporary solutions when the right solution is staring the Internet in the face, though it is not implemented due to political circumstances. The Internet lost to the French Minitel because the latter provides more locally relevant content and because of high costs of communications and hardware.

The law (prior to the 1996 Communications Act) forbade them to do anything that was not one way transfer of video via cables. Communications Most computer owners still possess a 28,800 bps modem. A cable modem is 80 times speedier than the ISDN and 700 times faster than a 14,400 bps modem. Numerically speaking: 7 million households in the USA are fitted with a two-way data transfer cable modems. To begin to enjoy video and audio (especially the former) — data transfer rates need to be 50 times faster. Never go crazy, you simply need gentle touches which fit in with your normal movements as you talk. There is also need to connect the fibre optic infrastructure which characterizes cable companies to the old copper coaxial infrastructure which characterizes telephony. 50% of all cable subscribers also have a PC at home. Experiments conducted with cable modems led to a doubling of usage time (from an average of 24 to 47 hours per month per user) which was wholly attributable to the increased speed.

Sales of such modems amount to 1.3 billion USD annually. The 56,600 bps is gradually replacing its slower predecessor (48% of computers with modems) — but even this is hardly sufficient. The future is, inevitably, even more vague than the present. Thus, any attempt at predicting its future dealt mainly with its hardware and software components. Media experts, sociologists, psychologists, advertising and marketing executives were left out of the collective effort to determine the future face of the Internet. Between 50-60% of all Internet users live in the USA, 5-10% in Canada. The percentage of the educated and the well-to-do among the users of the Web is three times as high as their proportion in the population. One in three child abuse images found free online Web Sex are now selfies with girls as young as 11 tricked into performing sex acts via web cam. How many of them have access to the Web (World Wide Web — WWW) and use it?

The Internet — A Western Phenomenon Not African, not Asian (with the exception of Israel and Japan), not Russian, nor a Third World phenomenon. It belongs squarely to the wealthy, sated world. The Internet — an Elitist and Chauvinistic Medium The average user of the Internet is young (30), with an academic background and high income. As far as content is concerned, the Internet cannot be currently defined as a medium. Growing out of bizarre roots — it is bound to yield strange fruit as a medium. Dress up — pick out costumes, fancy clothes or any dress theme. I wish I still had that collection of panties, but this way I can just pick one up or buy something that catches my eye. It may be possible to do this without handling the animals at all, perhaps by collection and chemical analysis of scats or by close observation of behaviour. This comes close to a cultural revolution in the allocation of leisure time. Authoritative consultancy firms predict 66 million active users in 10 years time. IBM envisages 700 million users. At the end of 1999 there were 130 million registered (though not necessarily active) users. Most of the users are of the «experiencer» variety.