From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The information superhighway is a term that is sometimes used to describe the Internet (for the early state of the Internet, see Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog).

Nam June Paik, a 20th century South Korean born American video artist, claims to have coined the term in 1974. “I used the term (information superhighway) in a study I wrote for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974. I thought: if you create a highway, then people are going to invent cars. That's dialectics. If you create electronic highways, something has to happen.” [1] The term was popularized by former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore in the early 1990s.[2]

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists "Information Superhighway" under "Information" and defines it as "a route or network for the high-speed transfer of information; esp. (a) a proposed national fiber-optic network in the United States; (b) the Internet." The OED also cites usage of this term in three periodicals:

• the January 3, 1983 issue of Newsweek: "...information superhighways being built of fiber-optic cable will link Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D. C. in a 776-mile system on the East Coast."

• the December 19, 1991 issue of the Christian Science Monitor: "Senator Gore calls NREN the "information superhighway" - a catalyst for what he hopes will become one day a national fiber-optic network."

• the October 26, 1993 issue of the New York Times: "One of the technologies Vice President Al Gore is pushing is the information superhighway, which will link everyone at home or office to everything else—movies and television shows, shopping services, electronic mail and huge collections of data."

• Al Gore's contributions to the internet and technology
• National Information Infrastructure
• The Superhighway Summit

• Besser, Howard. The Information SuperHighway: Social and Cultural Impact, 1995.
• Europe Seeks a Lane on Info Highway, International Herald Tribune, October 1995.
• Gore, Al. Remarks given by Vice President Gore at The Superhighway Summit, UCLA, January 11, 1994. [3]
• ---"Information Superhighways: The Next Information Revolution." The Futurist, January-February 1991, Vol. 25: 21-23.
• Kahn, Jeffery. Building and Rescuing the Information Superhighway, 1993.
• Special Issue: TIME magazine, 12 April 1993: The Info Highway: Bringing a revolution in entertainment, news, and communication
  • Take A Trip into the Future on the ELECTRONIC SUPERHIGHWAY