Would it be possible to stop the world wide web from expanding beyond being a small generally anonymous community?
Delaying - quite easy. Make original internet a top secret for military-only usage. Ultimately, internet-like competing networks will appear and proliferate, likely from the gaming community, but it will take several decades of "wars of standards" and relative neglect before something resembling a global network can be established. Imagine a hundred of competing FidoNet entities.
If personal computers stayed in the $10,000 range, however, the OTL events that made them commercially viable would be hard to stop. However, if PCs stayed expensive, it would make the internet more of a niche product of the upper class.
Yes, all of this and more, but without TCP/IP.So, just like OTL, with BBS, UseNet, FidoNet, AOL, BIX, Compuserve, Prodigy, Delphi.....
Yes, all of this and more, but without TCP/IP.
Yes, you may be correct. What`s why i say "delay internet" instead of "prevention of internet creation". The exact amount of delay caused by war of standards and inconvenient connection schemes is debatable though.while not as nice as TCP/IP, the Internet could have still gone on with the X.25 protocol that many in those I listed used, for a world spanning network.
..., you only get onto YOUR network and not in a general cross-flow of networks.
You could have lots of private/proprietary networks - Bloomberg TV for example. These could develop so that however developed you get, you only get onto YOUR network and not in a general cross-flow of networks.
In the late 1980's I recall USNET access being a major selling feature for the dial up BBS I subscribed to.Yet customers were clamoring for interconnection.
Thus 'Eternal September' in 1993, with AOL getting access to USENET
Thus 'Eternal September' in 1993, with AOL getting access to USENET
Floppy diskettes first.Learning nothing from the railroads, or automotive industries.
I'm imagining folks mailing thumb drives to exchange data.