Donald M. Petersen Jr., BS, HCD(hc), FICC(h), Publisher
While the first Internet apparitions date as far back as the 1960s, most people are recognizing 2003 as its 20th anniversary. As you read its early history,1 you can't help but notice how long it took developers to lay the necessary foundation for what we have today.
As the concept took shape, professors, entrepreneurs and consumers began to see the potential. Some national governments embraced the new technology quickly; others just seemed to ignore it.
Some of the more interesting highlights over the last 20 years:
- In 1987, the number of hosts topped 10,000; two years later, that number was over 100,000.
- The "www" (World Wide Web) protocol wasn't used until 1991, eight years after the official birth of the Internet.
- By 1992, the number of hosts broke 1 million.
- Internet Talk Radio and the United Nations came online in 1993.
- You could start ordering pizza online in 1994, the same time many developed nations joined in. Banner advertising began the same year.
- 1995: Prodigy and CompuServe services were over a decade old, and America Online2 (beginning as Quantum) joined them in emerging as major Internet service providers (ISPs). The world was also introduced to JAVA and RealAudio technology, and the Vatican came online.
- 1996 saw many of those same ISPs experiencing serious service outages due to the dramatic growth of the Web. (AOL was down for an entire 19 hours!) It was also the year ChiroWeb went online.
- 1997, 1998 and 1999 saw various advances, including electronic postage stamps. The Web was up to over 320 million pages in 1998.
- Two years later, the Web had grown to an estimated 1 billion pages. This was also the beginning of the first "shake-up" of many Internet "start-ups."
All this is to give you some sense of the progress of an industry in its first phase of growth. The Internet is now a common part of our lives, with the majority of people in the U.S. online, sending e-mail and making online purchases. Approximately 66 percent (137 million) of U.S. adults are now online,
3 with most of those seeking health information on the Web at one time or another.
In the last seven years, ChiroWeb has grown to over 50,000 pages, enjoying over 13 million hits each month, with an average of 350,000 unique visits. According to one source, our reach is over 24 million. Total circulation for all of ChiroWeb's electronic newsletters now exceeds 140,000.
Like the Web, chiropractic has gone through an initial growth phase over nearly 110 years. We saw the exponential growth when chiropractic schools were popping up everywhere. We've overcome the doubt and discrimination from the medical community, other health care providers and the public.
You may not know it, but it was a little more than 20 years ago that the research journal Spine would not recognize or publish a doctor of chiropractic degree after a researcher's name. Today, chiropractic is in danger of being imitated by various other "alternative" health care professions.
Publicly, we've gone from being unknown to earning a general level of respect. Among the health care community, we've gone from a "questionable" profession to the point that many are asking if chiropractic really deserves the label of "alternative therapy."
We are no longer a "start-up" health profession.
Chiropractic has reached adolescence in a health care marketplace that has been forced to mature very quickly over the last two decades. While investors are looking for promised profits among the surviving Internet corporations, the public is still looking to be convinced that chiropractic is all we claim it is.
And yet another decade in chiropractic history is almost past without this profession having a viable, consistent, effective means of educating people about the value of chiropractic care. One-on-one patient testimony and referral is still the way most new patients come to our offices.
The early days of chiropractic were quite exciting; when reading about them, you can become almost intoxicated by the enthusiasm and accomplishments of our dedicated and determined pioneers. Like the beginning of the Internet, this was a time of not only survival, but definition. There were many models in the beginning, but the best approach usually wins out.
But this is a different era for both chiropractic and the Web. The environment and its challenges have changed. We have progressed to a time when issues are more complicated, clear victories are harder to win and goals are forced to be more realistic. It's no wonder that some long for the way we were!
As chiropractic enters its 12th and 13th decades, our agenda will dictate just what we can and can't accomplish. We have always shown that if we, the profession as a whole, make a goal our priority; we can make it happen; if we don't - it doesn't.
The same holds true for your practice. Your immediate (one-year) and long-term (10- to 20-year) goals will only become realities if you make them priorities.
If you have finished January without doing so, take five minutes and make a list of your short-term and long-term goals, both professional and personal. Now throw out the "wishful thinking," and decide what you will make a priority.
A lot can happen in 20 years. Make certain that you are where you really want to be, or at the very least, headed there.
References
- Robert Zakon. Hobbes' Internet Timeline v5.6. www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline.
- Web sites for Prodigy (www.prodigy.net); Compuserve (www.compuserve.com); and America Online (www.corp.aol.com).
- http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/geographics/article/0,,5911_1011491,00.html
DMP Jr.
