Limiting the uses of the research-oriented Internet reduced the range of inventions for the early Internet. The NSF’s managers focused the Internet on the needs of their niche user communities—students, faculty, university administrators, and researchers. As chapter 3 observed, this had salutary effects and also distorted later events. Due to restrictions on participation and acceptable uses, many commercial applications for the Internet were unexplored prior to privatization. There was no possibility for tailoring new products and services to every potential new set of users outside of
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