The contributors' prognostications are thick with references to protocols and file systems that now seem hopelessly arcane to mainstream users -- FTP and Gopher, for instance. And many of their worries focus on newsgroups, now a Web backwater. (Albeit one that's still going strong.) But look deeper, and you'll see how many predictions are dead-on, though some came to pass in slightly different forms, or with a twist. And you may be struck by how little some fundamental issues have changed: In some cases, simply swap nouns -- most typically, "Web" for "newsgroups" -- and you'll have an accurate portrait of the opportunities and challenges facing the Net today.