WSJ.com's Internet Wayback Machine

I received an email this evening from Bill Grueskin, Managing Editor of WSJ.com. No, it wasn't a pitch to subscribe; I'm already a subscriber. Imagine my surprise when I read the following:

We have a bunch of nostalgia on the site this week to commemorate WSJ.com's 10th anniversary-- and starting at midnight the whole site is free til May 10

Among the highlights is the original WSJ.com home page from late April 1996, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/MoneyInvesting/edit/frontpg.html

At the bottom there's a Readers Discuss link, which takes you to this page, http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/MoneyInvesting/edit/t-ptcol.html

Which takes you to this letter at the bottom, which is, when I read it today, pretty damned prescient.

I assume you're the same guy (we didn't have Google in 1996, did we, but I seemed to find your site quickly today), and if so, I salute your wisdom!

Best regards,
Bill Grueskin
Managing Editor,
The Wall Street Journal Online at www.wsj.com

He then proceeded to cite my posting to the reader's discussion section as follows:

Universal freedom of the press is, in my opinion, the biggest change that the Internet brings to our society. For the first time, the little publisher has access to the same means of distribution that The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times does. His audience is limited only by his ability to deliver content that the Internet wants to read, and his ability to market that content. Never in the history of America (or any nation), has the ordinary person had control of both the printing press and a global means of distribution. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would have been proud, because tyranny by the government is nearly impossible when there is no centralized control of the communications medium.

This concept of democratic expression brings up a fundamental difference between the Internet and other types of media. The Internet is a community of interacting citizens. Its attraction is not that it is great technology; its attraction is that it provides a distance-insensitive way for people to distribute their ideas, their pictures of their cats, their concepts of what is true and good and what isn't. The technology has many limitations at the moment: bandwidth is not free, the connectivity is too slow, and people need computers to participate. However, as a communications medium, its power, reach, and flexibility are unmatched by any other today.

This democracy of access also extends to the business community. On the Internet, no one knows how big your company is. The World Wide Web distills your company into what it publishes and how well it reacts to customer need. Therefore, if you can prove to your readers or customers that you can satisfy their needs as well as a multi-billion dollar corporation can, you can compete in the Internet market for your goods or services. So Joe's Local Bank can take on Citibank on the Internet and win, provided they provide better service to their Internet customers.

Surprisingly, this democracy also causes a paradox. In a world where there is no predetermined information sources, how do we know what to believe? If anyone can publish anything, then the free market gets to decide what is truth and what isn't, and there is no natural law that ensures that the truth will win. If a majority of visitors to an Internet site claim O.J.Simpson is guilty, it does not make it so; it just makes it a majority opinion. A majority of readers can vote to make pi = 3 (as some state legislatures have attempted to do); it's not going to make it true.

This paradox leads to two possible outcomes: majority opinion becomes confused with truth, or people learn to live with this free market of ideas and become more discriminating in believing what they read. The authors of legislation such as the Communications Decency Act believe that the former is true, and that authorities need to provide guidance to ordinary people in what they should read or see. I hold the more optimistic view that Internet readers can learn to live with the ambiguities of having multiple conflicting sources of information (just as they already do with television and newspapers), and that they will make intelligent choices in what they read and believe. Society will evolve to embrace the freedom of speech and press on the Internet just as ordinary citizens learned how to vote on complex issues in government. The Internet will be the catalyst to that evolution, and it will foster the freedom of speech and press throughout the world.

Carl D. Howe
BBN Corporation

You know what? I still believe all of this, despite 10 years of change since. And trends like open source and Wikipedia only provide more proof of my thesis. May it still as true in 2106 as it is today in 2006.

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