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<\/a>\r\n“Solar power is the fastest-growing industry in the world, and\r\nit’s growing along in the same way the Internet did,” says\r\nJohn S. Quarterman, a Harvard-educated author and Internet pioneer\r\nwho launched the first commercial online newsletter, among other\r\nthings, and who lives in rural Lowndes County.\r\n<\/p>\r\n
\r\n“Think back 20 years to 1993. How many people had heard of the\r\nInternet? And look at how far we’ve come. What I’m seeing with solar\r\nenergy is the same kind of exponential growth. It’s clean energy\r\nthat works, and it generates jobs.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n
\r\nHere are 1992 ten-year graphs of Internet\r\ngrowth from that newsletter, Matrix News,\r\nusing the only data then available, Internet hosts (computers\r\nconnected to the Internet):\r\n
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\r\nThose graphs show exponential growth like compound interest, for a decade.\r\nFrom them, I projected forward (see forthcoming post<\/a>) to the inevitable victory of the Internet\r\nover all other communications networks.\r\n
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<\/a>\r\nFor how strange that must have sounded in the early 1990s, watch\r\n\r\nthis outtake from NBC’s Today Show in 1994<\/a>, (“Allison, can you explain what the Internet is?”):\r\n
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