Hi Earlie, I am going to throw out my comments for what they are worth, I have no idea whether what I say has any broader application, although I suspect so:
I first started using the Internet, although it wasn't the Web, direct dial using, I think, Unix, in 1983, using Westlaw and Nexis. My law school had both, available for free for students, 2800 modem, and I was research editor of the law review so I used it every day. Slow as molasses, but faster than using the books. At that time lawyers who were older could not use it, they couldn't understand it.
In 1994, I signed up for Grateful Med, and that was what I used to research medical malpractice, it was again direct dial and Unix, and I also signed up for Compuserve, and used that for research also. By then, it was using the web, but again it was slow, and tricky. The National Library of Medicine changed over to the Net, I think in 1996.
Fast forward to 1998, I can't get over the changes, and I still use the Internet for legal research and medical research. Nothing else comes close. If you go to a medical library, you will use PubMed, which replaced Grateful Med. Doctors all over the world access information on-line, the medical information on-line is one of the world's great treasures.
What doctors want now is the ability to visualize patients over the net, they want net video to be commonplace. They want to be able to look at x-rays, heart charts, in real-time, to be able to get a second opinion from the leaders in the field while they are sitting in their offices in rural backwaters.
Similarly, there is an awful lot of legal information online, and if you want to pay for more, there is Lexis and Westlaw. Lawyers want to be able to access cases up-to-the-minute, see what is going on at the local courthouse, bring in expert witnesses via video.
There are an unbelieveable number of newspapers and magazines online, some of which are free, some of which are not.
Bottom line, not just investors, but business people use the internet every day. My father's third wife uses it to keep track of her trucks, for example, she has a moving company.
If you want to know who uses the Internet, ask the people who are making money, running companies, running the government, running universities, doing cutting edge scientific research. If you think the Internet is a fad, I think you'll be surprised.
CobaltBlue |
