I hold in my hands a copy of the September 1994 edition of Boardwatch Magazine. This was from back in the day when BBSes were in their prime, and the Internet was just about to take over. There are ads in here for 28.8 k modems, eSoft’s TBBS system, and deltaComm’s Telix Communications Software for Windows, which includes support for RIPscrip graphics.

Also, in this edition, is a column from John Dvorak:

I have a preoccupation with fads. When I see a spike in activity such as with the Internet, I immediately think to myself: FAD!

[He goes on to discuss fashion fads… then … ]

So why did interest begin to spike? Some might argue that cheap 14.4 kbps modems allowed newcomers to get into online activity and they all piled onto the Internet because it’s cheap and easy. This of course makes no sense because a newcomer doesn’t get a modem one day and log onto the net the next day. It’s not trivial. You have to have software, and you need a way to get onto the net in the first place. You aren’t born with this knowledge.

[He speculates for a few more paragraphs]

Let’s look at free mail. Free mail seems to be a societal trend and part of a communications revolution. Much of the activity on the 50,000 BBSs around the country is about free mail.

[He discusses the free mail phenomenon, what happened when Prodigy cut off free, unlimited mail, and how some kid named Morris nearly brought down the Internet by sending a worm virus over email.]

You can put two and two together as well as I can. The Morris case dragged on long enough to put the Internet into the public mindset as a commonplace. It was after the Morris case that the growth of the net began. And the growth began to spike after Prodigy cutt off the free mail. I don’t see these things as coincidences. What I do see though is the other aspects of the Internet as a fad and the Internet as a network for free mail as a trend. All the fancy stuff you can do on the Internet will still be do-able, but people will fall back to using the net for free mail and not much else. There are better ways to get information than from the Internet, let’s face it. But there is no better way to deliver mail to Bulgaria! The net will eventually go back into being the low-profile academic and professional meeting place where professors can exchange ideas and documents. Its use as a secure place for business to do transactions will never come to fruition. Simply put, the net is too easy to hack. And its usefulness as a source of information is questionable.