Science & Tech Quote by Jim Barksdale

Barksdale’s line reads like a mission statement from the moment when “the Internet” still had to be sold as a management upgrade, not a fact of life. The intent is pragmatic and evangelical at once: he’s pitching networked communication as infrastructure, the kind of unglamorous backbone that makes everything else run faster. By framing it as “the way people communicate” rather than “the way computers connect,” he translates technology into workplace behavior - less about gadgets, more about coordination, speed, and reduced friction.

The subtext is classic late-90s/early-2000s business logic: communication isn’t a soft skill, it’s a lever. “Improve” signals measurable gains (shorter cycles, fewer middlemen, better customer retention), while “within a business” and “between a business and its customers and partners” sketches a whole value chain under renovation. He’s quietly dissolving boundaries - internal memos, supply chains, customer service - into one continuous flow of information. That’s a cultural shift as much as a technical one: authority moves from hierarchy to networks, and responsiveness becomes a competitive identity.

The context matters because Barksdale wasn’t theorizing from a distance. As a telecom veteran and Netscape-era executive, he’s speaking from the front lines of the browser boom, when companies were being told to rebuild themselves around email, websites, intranets, and early e-commerce. The rhetoric is deliberately plain because the audience is skeptical executives: make it sound like common sense, and the revolution slips in through the budget.