
Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995) - munaf
https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306
======
scalio
Fascinating how the analysis gets wrong what becomes possible or doesn't
(online shopping,...), but hits the nail on the head concerning the
psychological and social aspects.

> The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages
> across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers.
> Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is
> heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete
> with handles, harrassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts,
> few listen.

> Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping—just
> point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the
> network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores
> will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an
> afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?

> While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of
> knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A
> poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and
> where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human
> interactions are relentlessly devalued.

~~~
zouhair
Any predictions that pertains to the technological aspect of our lives is
utterly futile.

Imagine you are in the mid 90' and you say to someone that in the next decade
we will have a camera, a video camera, a radio, a music and video player, a
voice recorder and much more in just one pocket. Saying it like this make it
look insane.

On the other hand psychological and social aspects are linked to our brains
that didn't change much in the course of the human recorded history.

~~~
notahacker
The idea that pocket sized devices which had shrunk and become more popular
since the 1980s would shrink further and potentially be consolidated into
fewer devices was less a radical idea and more an extrapolation of trends in
the 1990s.

An iPhone would have been strikingly impressive in 1995, but few people would
have difficulty grasping what it was, or that there might be a demand for it,
especially not if they already possessed a Walkman and mobile phone, thought
their next camera might be a digital one and had considered buying a PDA

------
lordnacho
The main thing that he's right about is that it's a mess. There's so much
noice and little authority.

When I was a kid in the 90s news and information was curated. If you read an
opinion in the paper it was some guy who'd been writing for a long time, who'd
done the background reading, and who normally presented things in a balanced
way, whatever his leaning was. Nowadays you can find just about any extreme
view, badly written in an aggressive or sarcastic tone, and ignorant of the
history of the topic. It's not necessarily good to always have the sober and
historically informed opinion, but it sure would be good to have it most of
the time.

Not sure if he mentioned this, but it's also gotten a lot easier to find like
minded uninformed people. I'm still undecided about whether flat earthers are
all kidding, but if they aren't you can see how hard it's going to be to climb
out of that intellectual hole. There's now conferences and loads of websites
about the Bedford Level experiment, and all sorts of other flat earth tropes.

~~~
mercer
This has been on my mind quite often when I use reddit. I grew up on phpBB
style forums where every user was immediately identifiable, through avatar,
signature etc. And to a lesser degree I find myself developing a kind of
'image' of various HN posters.

On reddit this somehow doesn't happen. Every comment stands on its own and
half the time what looks like a threaded conversation is various different
users replying to each other.

I think something very important is lost there. Much as I'd like to believe
so, I think the way my brain works is that no comment stands on its own and
communication is heavily mediated by the knowledge and reputation of the other
in relation to myself. Without that, so much that is valuable in the exchange
of information, whether facts or opionion, or nuance, is lost.

~~~
ianai
You’re totally right. If it’s an argument then maybe one of the replies
convinced the original poster. But some other person may reply to the most
authoritative reply and claim superiority and falsehood of that posts
authority. And there’s no way to correct it automatically. So all the smart
comments wind up fighting the incorrect and an honest third party will likely
have gained nothing.

------
emacsen
A little context on the author is in order.

His name is Clifford Stoll and he was a physicist and early Internet user. He
wrote the book "The Cuckoo's Egg" which should be required reading for all
sys-admins.

In the mid-90s, he saw the Internet as something akin to Fahrenheit 451 and
began preaching how it would tear us apart as a society. To that end, he wrote
Silicon Snake Oil and articles like this one, which combines philosophy and
cultural observations (the mob mentality of the crowd) with nonsensical
conclusions based on the current technology (ie that online shopping would
never be a big thing). I was never sure if he genuinely believed that it
wasn't possible, or if he was merely trying to make the web less appealing
somehow to prevent it from happening.

Years later he started to sell Klein Bottles on his website. I'm not sure if
he still does, but in the year 2000, you could order them from him and he'd
take your order over the phone. I ordered a few and it was fun to talk to him.

~~~
jacquesm
> Years later he started to sell Klein Bottles on his website.

From a miniature robotic warehouse under his house, no less:

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/23/how-clifford-stoll-
sells-k...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/06/23/how-clifford-stoll-sells-klein-
bottles-from-under-his-house/)

------
finknotal
"Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic
glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't
tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT
Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the
Intenet. Uh, sure."

Beautiful example of article where the author was skeptical based on the wild
west of the current state of technology. What current technology is the same?
VR? Self driving cars?

~~~
eksemplar
VR would be my bet. Every time is exit VR I feel like my monitor is limiting.

It requires quite a lot of work though, and unlike the web, it probably can’t
be done by one person in a basement. Which I think is important to it’s
impact, because google probably wouldn’t have existed if it couldn’t have
started small and gradually build its way up.

~~~
GordonS
It feels like decent VR has been 'any time now' away for _decades_. Is Oculus
still the only real attempt at it these days?

~~~
exodust
Technical progress is slower than the VR hype train. Not only that, but
ergonomics was a bigger issue than many predicted.

In the meantime, I don't see any reason why we can't see arcade venues bounce
back, with dedicated VR rooms using powerful projections rather than headsets.

I know I'd prefer a room with 360 VR projection done well, moving platform or
chair to simulate driving, flying etc, and surround sound with huge cinematic
range, than a headset with headphones.

The other issue with headsets is when sharing them, particularly public ones.
There's a certain hygiene factor, if you know what I mean!

------
planck01
Well, he was wrong. And he admitted it in 2010:"Of my many mistakes, flubs,
and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler ... Now, whenever I
think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff
..."

~~~
ModernMech
I think in 2010 the outlook of Internet was a little more rosey than it is
today, almost a decade later. The thesis of the article holds in many regards,
notably on the social implications rather than the tech predictions. I think
this piece will age well after all.

------
gboudrias
This is so hilariously, specifically wrong, you'd think someone wrote it now
and travelled back in time for giggles. Great find! And I'm amazed they still
have the article online, the only one by Clifford Stoll, funnily enough.

Still, a good lesson: It remains too easy to miss the forest for the trees. We
never wanted salesmen or paper, what we actually wanted were products and
information. In other words, it's easy to forget that the technology is _not_
the product, just a vehicle for it.

~~~
marvin
Look back at Hacker News in twenty years. You'll see whole threads full of
comments that are so specifically wrong it looks like a parody :)

~~~
WhiteSource1
That implies that Hacker News will be around in 20 years. Newsweek will be (in
some format or another).

~~~
andrew_
I genuinely thought that twitter was a ridiculous fad for trend-whores and it
would die quickly, or remain a tiny niche. I've been wrong about tech so many
times personally it's ridiculous.

------
NegatioN
I feel like this phrase rings somewhat true, even though he was off on many
other things: " When most everyone shouts, few listen".

It's quite hard to know who to listen to, and who is telling something
objectively true in this environment, since everyone's voice has the same
weight. And there are too many of them to sift through, so many probably end
up listening to people who pander to them.

~~~
rainbowmverse
There was no shortage of hype peddlers and ignorant people with authority
before the internet. All the internet did was wake more people up to this fact
and force them to either start thinking critically or turn into cynics.

What changed is the peddlers and powerful fools have bigger audiences now.
There's less space for the niche con artist because all the marks are in
someone's downline throwing all their money and credit at a lost cause.

------
EGreg
Although most of what he said has been easily addressed in the last 20 years,
one thing lingers. And it’s not because we can’t solve it, but the VC model
has prioritized ads instead, and for whatever reason, social networking hasn’t
had any good OPEN SOURCE platforms. My guess is because they would have to
work across websites, and very few standards too off.

 _What 's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the
fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks
isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for
meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to
the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing?
While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of
knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A
poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and
where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human
interactions are relentlessly devalued._

I have spent the last 7 years and nearly $1 million dollars building such a
platform. It’s free and open source but we have yet to make the marketing for
it. It needs to be clear how to get started with it, and a community needs to
grow. Going to release it later this year. Maybe Nov 5th?

[https://qbix.com](https://qbix.com)

~~~
rainbowmverse
Your site has some auto-playing video below the fold and a spinning GIF of a
globe from 1995. It's cluttered, noisy, and unclear. There is no point of
focus. I can't get as far as figuring out what sets it apart or makes it
better because I had to close the page.

Compare this to Mastodon--which you dismissed with all other open source
social networks--where the project lead thinks hard and openly about the
accessibility and value of virtually every UX change.

~~~
EGreg
Thank you for your feedback. What operating system and browser do you use that
the video autoplays? It’s not supposed to. And the globe - if you click it -
is a visualization of 5 million people actually using our product.

Where is Mastodon today? What are its stats?

~~~
rainbowmverse
>> _" What operating system and browser do you use that the video autoplays?"_

Latest Firefox and Windows 10.

>> _" Where is Mastodon today? What are its stats?"_

This is the wrong question before you ask about the goals of the platform and
its users. Stats only let you compare it against something it might have no
interest in being.

Your dismissal of it and other open source efforts is likely due to a goal
mismatch. The fact that you spent so much money on it tells me you're probably
aiming at a Twitter competitor.

I don't care about Twitter and its goals. I care about what Mastodon _is_ and
what I already do with it. It's self-funding and community supported. There
are plenty of people on it, and it's still growing. It seems like someone's
making a new thing with ActivityPub every month that I can interact with from
my Mastodon account. That's all that matters to me, and seems to be enough for
most of the people on it.

~~~
EGreg
Not aiming at a Twitter competitor at all. If we wanted that, we’d be done in
like 3-6 months.

What we built is a GENERAL PURPOSE OPEN SOURCE SOCIAL APP PLATFORM.

Like Wordpress but for collaboration.

The goal is total reusability. You release an app for your community and
install some plugins for various functionality. Then you throw some “tools” on
“pages”. Apply styles. And you’re done. Your app works on the web on every
device, can be released in app stores, integrates with notifications,
contacts, etc. out of the box.

What sort of “tools” can you have in your apps? Well here is just a sample:

    
    
      Chatroom
      Chess game
      Collaborative documents
      Blogging
      Group rides
      Events and checkins
    

“Streams” is our we handle data. Out of the box every stream supports:

    
    
      Role based access control integrated with contacts
      Invites
      Realtime updates
      Offline notifications
      Relations and indexing
    

We integrate with every browser and OS vendor for Payments and Notifications.

And more. We provide a standard interface for people to basically collaborate
with one another, and do it across domains too. Meanwhile developers can add
new types of “streams” and “tools” for app developers and also startups can
package and sell various apps to communities. Everyone can re-use code. Did
you see the video?

~~~
rainbowmverse
While I have no specific affinity for ActivityPub as a protocol, I do like a
lot of the software being built on it and enjoy being able to follow people on
them from my Mastodon account.

No one's investing or expecting a return on a million dollars in investment
with it. It's already a W3C standard. One popular piece of software (which you
dismissed) supports it. Other promising attempts like Plume (blogging),
Pixelfed (image sharing), and Aardwolf (Facebook-like) are in development.
They're already revenue neutral (or better) from the Patreons and Liberapays
that provide their funding.

From that perspective, your thing is just another closed-off ecosystem that
doesn't talk to any other. Open source is not sufficient when we're talking
about social media software. My new social graph is growing, and it's not
dependent on someone expecting an ROI.

I understand you started this project before ActivityPub was a thing, and
before anyone took federated social media seriously. But that's the hazard
with starting early: sometimes something comes along and forces you to change
how you think.

You missed the boat, and you don't realize it because you're busy building a
yacht that holds smaller yachts. It's a nice yacht, but I like the growing
network of party barges I'm on.

~~~
EGreg
You can like it, but I know that protocols are driven by large commercial
projects, not the other way around.

oAuth was pioneered by Twitter and took off BECAUSE they had clout. I have
seen FOAF, Personas and tons of other things fall by the wayside without
adoption.

~~~
rainbowmverse
You and I are talking about completely different things. I don't care about
numbers or prospective adoption of a private company's protocol and platform.
I'm talking about what I can do _now_. What I'm already using it for. What's
on the horizon. What's not going to happen. It's popular enough for my needs.
It's funded. It's in active development.

No matter how popular your protocol gets, it's still your protocol. I have no
interest in it. I can go back to Twitter if I want to have my social
connections locked into someone else's platform.

I have been burned by enough companies that play up open source and
development ecosystems, then close up when it's no longer convenient. Your own
example of Twitter was built on developers making tools for it. Who makes apps
for Twitter now but marketing companies? Virtually no one.

~~~
EGreg
Twitter has centralized servers.

Wordpress is used by 1/3 of all websites in the world.

Our thing is like Wordpress not Twitter.

So while it doesn’t currently support the latest protocol du jour (XMPP?
FriendFeed? FOAF? ActivityPub? PubSubHubbub? Scuttlebutt?) it actually WORKS
and people can use it to actually build apps today that are on par with what
they get in Facebook.

Like I said if all we wanted was to have a microblog we would be done very
soon. As it is that is 1% of the functionality you need for realtime
collaboration, offline notifications etc.

~~~
rainbowmverse
You're not trying to understand me. You keep repeating irrelevant or
misinformed points.

You go make your thing. I'll keep enjoying the platform I'm on.

~~~
EGreg
So you just commented to say you enjoy the platform you’re on, and therefore
WE missed the boat and no one needs our platform?

I guess I don’t understand your point ultimately. Just because YOU like
something specific for your needs doesn’t mean there isn’t a large opportunity
for something that addresses a totally different need.

------
bwldrbst
I read Stoll's book Silicon Snake Oil back then and thought it a bit short
sighted too. It's amazing how much the Internet experience has changed in 20
years - and not all of it for the better.

Also, the fact that there's a typo directly above the phrase "Lacking editors,
reviewers or critics" made me chuckle.

------
ikt
It seems he was close in some aspects but very far off in others.

------
_bxg1
This is a striking mixture of things that are incredibly prophetic with things
that are incredibly shortsighted.

------
linkmotif
Who has two flat panel monitors in 1995?

~~~
exodust
Nobody. The image is more recent.

------
arisAlexis
ahem, Bitcoin

------
adamnemecek
The internet? That’s still around?

