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Blast From The Past: A 1995 Guide To Doing Business On The Internet

I stumbled over a copy of the book Doing (More) Business On The Internet, which I picked up 13 years ago when first getting a handle on this strange, new form of electronic business. Leafing through it is like looking at your high school yearbook, without the bad haircuts. The cover alone is like a trip in the Back to the Future car.

Hey, kids, remember the "electronic highway?" Actually, it was usually called the "Information Superhighway." If you haven't gotten the point yet, the artwork shows a highway. And note the badge, indicating the book covers topics including the WWW, Mosaic, and Netscape. Whatever happened to Mosaic, anyway?

The preface to this, the second edition, proclaims:

Doing business on the Internet has become the norm for thousands of companies in the United States.

You hear that? Thousands! Wow!

Since publication of the first edition of this book, over 20,000 businesses have registered for commercial Internet domains.

Over 20,000! Wow!

The preface, by author Mary Cronin, goes on to talk about the Web -- spelling the name out in full every time: "World Wide Web." It spells out the phrase "Universal Resource Locator (URL). And it concludes with the author's URL (which now leads to a Canadian office-furniture firm):

World Wide Web Home Page at:
http://www.novalink.com/cronin

To reach this and other World Wide Web locations, users need Web browser software. Such software provides a prompt for location address. Home page addresses always start with http:// followed by the exact sequence given. For more information navigating the World Wide Web, see Chapter 9.

Chapter 1 of the book gives an overview of the history of digital networks and how the Internet evolved. Chapter 2 is a manager's guide to the Internet, including information on the Web -- pardon me, the World Wide Web -- Gopher, and Usenet (which the author spells out in all-caps -- "USENET").

It's a pretty good chapter, actually, looking at using the Internet for competitive advantage and to build relationships with vendors and suppliers. Businesses are looking at those same issues today.

Elsewhere in the book, the author looks at how companies like Schlumberger, IBM, and Oracle were pioneering use of the Internet.

1995 was the year that the global impact of the Internet started to sink in for me. Driving to pick up lunch one day, I was gobsmacked by a billboard for a local car dealership -- with a URL on it! People were publishing URLs on billboards! I knew then the Internet was truly revolutionary. I'd known that intellectually before, but seeing a URL on a billboard like that really drove it home viscerally.

A little later in that decade, we talked about "Internet time," and how much faster it was than real time. I used to dismiss that as a business cliche, but recently I've come to see the truth in the cliche. 1995 wasn't that long ago in real-world terms: I'm still married to the same woman, we still have one of the two cats we had back then. Sure, the geopolitical and economic situations are different now -- but we've had wars and recessions before. The world isn't that different today than it was 13 years ago. But in technology terms, 1995 was a million years ago.

Doing (More) Business On The Internet is a great resource if you happen to find yourself trying to implement an e-business strategy in 1995. It's an essential part of the business library for any time traveler. Surprisingly, you can still buy the book on Amazon.co.uk.

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