The Multinet would permeate society, Lick wrote, thus achieving the old MIT dream of an information utility, as updated for the decentralized network age: “many people work at home, interacting with coworkers and clients through the Multinet, and many business offices (and some classrooms) are little more than organized interconnections of such home workers and their computers. People shop through the Multinet, using its cable television and electronic funds transfer functions, and a few receive delivery of small items through adjacent pneumatic tube networks … Routine shopping and appointment scheduling are generally handled by private-secretary-like programs called OLIVERs which know their masters’ needs. Indeed, the Multinet handles scheduling of almost everything schedulable. For example, it eliminates waiting to be seated at restaurants.” Thanks to ironclad guarantees of privacy and security, Lick added, the Multinet would likewise offer on-line banking, on-line stock-market trading, on-line tax payment–the works.
In short, Lick wrote, the Multinet would encompass essentially everything having to do with information. It would function as a network of networks that embraced every method of digital communication imaginable, from packet radio to fiber optics–and then bound them all together through the magic of the Kahn-Cerf internetworking protocol, or something very much like it.
…
Lick predicted its mode of operation would be “one featuring cooperation, sharing, meetings of minds across space and time in a context of responsive programs and readily available information.” The Multinet would be the worldwide embodiment of equality, community, and freedom.
If, that is, the Multinet ever came to be.
– M. Mitchell Waldrop, “The Dream Machine”
Abacus Noir 