Information superhighway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The information superhighway was a term used to refer to the Internet up until the early 1990s. Its usage decreased as the term cyberspace became more common.

Contents

[edit] Usage

Nam June Paik, a 20th century South Korean born American video artist, claims to have coined the term in 1974. “I used the term (information superhighway) in a study I wrote for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974. I thought: if you create a highway, then people are going to invent cars. That's dialectics. If you create electronic highways, something has to happen.” [1]

The term was popularized by former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore during the early 1990s.[2]

The term was also used by Bill Gates in 1995 in his book "The Road Ahead" as a descendant of the internet.

[edit] Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists "Information Superhighway" under "Information" and defines it as "a route or network for the high-speed transfer of information; esp. (a) a proposed national fiber-optic network in the United States; (b) the Internet." The OED also cites usage of this term in three periodicals:

  • the January 3, 1983 issue of Newsweek: "...information superhighways being built of fiber-optic cable will link Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C. in a 776-mile system on the East Coast."
  • the October 26, 1993 issue of the New York Times: "One of the technologies Vice President Al Gore is pushing is the information superhighway, which will link everyone at home or office to everything else—movies and television shows, shopping services, electronic mail and huge collections of data."

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading