But What About The Pipes?

In this article, dated February 28, 1993, we find the N.Y. Times' first use (or so we are told) of the word "Internet." And just 13 words later comes "national data highway." Here's what the internet could do:

"At the low end, a small business could use the Internet for an electronic mailbox that could be called each day for messages."

Cheryl Currid, a business consultant in Houston, said she had begun using Radiomail, a Menlo Park, Calif., company that provides two-way mobile electronic mail over the Internet. Since she signed up, her cellular phone bill has dropped sharply.

"I'm an electronic mail addict," she said. "People can find me wherever I am. I have negotiated several business deals recently without even using a telephone."

They did not yet have the verb "to Google."

A number of easy-to-use programs permit rapid searches and retrieval of software and data from the remote corners of the eletronic universe. Archie, for example, written by programmers at McGill University in Montreal, will almost instantly search more than a thousand computers and two million software packages for a particular program and display where it can be found.