Date Hosts ----- --------- 05/69 4 10/69 5 04/71 23 06/74 62 03/77 111 08/81 213 05/82 235 08/83 562 10/84 1,024 10/85 1,961 02/86 2,308 11/86 5,089 12/87 28,174 07/88 33,000 10/88 56,000 01/89 80,000 07/89 130,000 10/89 159,000 10/90 313,000 01/91 376,000 07/91 535,000 07/91 535,000 10/91 617,000 01/92 727,000 04/92 890,000 07/92 992,000 10/92 1,136,000 01/93 1,313,000 04/93 1,486,000 07/93 1,776,000 10/93 2,056,000 01/94 2,217,000 03/95 ~4,000,000 [Multiply hosts by 100 to get approximate numbers of computers in the world at the time. For instance we should be approaching about 400 million computers in the world at the time of this first edition.] [Multiply Hosts by 10 to get an approximation of the total number of people. Early on, this was probably a smaller multiplier, as there were only 7 people on the UIUC login list at the time: half of these were not logging in on a regular basis. Thus my estimate that I was about the 100th person on the Internet as I presume our site was not the first nor the last of the 18 new sites in 1971, so approximating 9th, plus the 5 already there, we were probably around 14th or so, though they tell me we were actually earlier, to facilitate transcontinental traffic. Sticking with the conservative estimate of 14th, and with the same numbers of people on each of the other nodes, that would have made me the 99th user.] Television versus Education: Who Is Winning? [As If You Had To Ask] Basketball, Football, Baseball, Hockey and Golf [Live and Video Games] versus Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Verne and Hugo You would think that some operation that spends a hundred times more than another would not fear much competition-- especially when the deck is stacked in their favor as the following examples demonstrate: 1. There is always great battle between Macbeth and Macduff; Macbeth never gets blown out in the first quarter and the author never jacks you up for higher royalties. 2. Shakespeare was DESIGNED to be entertaining, so you don't have to change the rules every season to make things more exciting. Of course, if you WANT to, you can always turn Romeo and Juliet into a story about New York City warfare between street gangs instead of noble families of Verona. If the US actually spends a trillion dollars on education every year or two, and major sports franchising spends in the neighborhood of 1/100th of that amount, and the video game businesses spend even less, then why is it that your exposure to Michael Jordan was a given, and his paychecks were higher than any other college graduate in his class?