

The Internet? Bah (1995) - dnsworks
http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554/

======
pg
"Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll
soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure."

~~~
Sidnicious
To be fair, now, _fifteen years_ later, the hardware to make that reasonable
is only just appearing. The vast majority of people has still never bought an
ebook.

~~~
ugh
I never bought an ebook but I certainly do more than 95 percent of my reading
on a screen.

(Considering that many people sit in front of a screen during their whole
workday and read stuff I do not think that hardware was ever the problem. I do
not know why people think they would be unable to read books on a LC Display
when they have otherwise no problem staring at such screens for hours on end.
It’s about image, availability and price, not technology.)

~~~
InclinedPlane
You're making several fundamental mistakes. First, for a lot of what you read
on your screen you have no choice. Where else are you going to read it? So the
equation there is whether reading on a screen is better than not reading the
particular material at all. Whereas with e-books the equation is whether
reading on a screen (and the other benefits of e-books) is better than reading
a physical book. Given some of the less than desirable characteristics of
reading text on an LCD those benefits may not be enough.

Second, you probably spend a lot more time reading on a screen than most
people do. If your day job involves using a computer all day (which I'll
hazard a guess to a reasonable probability of such, given that this is hacker
news) then you'll already have internalized and accepted the tradeoffs of
doing a lot of reading on an LCD. But to someone who uses a computer say
1/10th or 1/100th as much as you do they have yet to come to that bridge, and
when they do they have a choice as to the technologies they use for screen
reading, the slight benefits of e-ink may be enough for them, even if it isn't
for you.

There are a lot of computer users in the world who have yet to read, say, 1
thousand words of paragraph after paragraph of text in a single sitting on a
device. To them the differences between reading text on physical paper, e-ink,
or an LCD may be much more significant than for those of us who already spend
our days staring at monitors and feel comfortable doing so.

~~~
ugh
Reading on a LCD is definitely different (even harder) than reading text on
paper. You need to get used to it.

But I would argue that more and more people are. And more and more might just
be enough. A big minority in any richer country might just do the job.

I’m not sure whether LCDs will be inside the devices which finally bring
digital books to the masses but I do think it’s a distinct possibility. I do
think they are good enough.

------
ghshephard
While Clifford Stoll has some useful points, in particular, "What's missing
from this electronic wonderland? Human contact." the majority of his essay is
already starting to feel dated.

There is a fairly well known maxim (thank you google:
[http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/jan/11/embracing-
uncertain...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/jan/11/embracing-uncertainty-
the-secret-to-effective-forecasting/)), that in the short term, we tend to
overestimate and in the long term, underestimate.

Saffo, also has another great quote, "Rule: Cherish failure. Preferably other
people’s. We fail our way into the future. Silicon Valley is brilliant at
this. Since new technologies take 20 years to have an overnight success, for
an easy win look for a field that has been failing for 20 years and build on
that."

Regarding books - Already eBooks are starting to have an impact, I'm a pretty
steady reader, and the groaning bookshelves and boxes (and boxes, and boxes)
of books that I used to go through have given away to my Kindle (and iPhone
Kindle).

Teaching is starting to undergo a revolution with sites like
<http://khanacademy.org>.

I haven't purchased a physical newspaper in 2+ years - and I'm a newspaper
Junkie.

Classifieds? I can't even tell you if my local newspapers have had them for
the last I don't know _how_ long - who _doesn't_ use craigslist.

I could go on and on, but the interesting thing is, we're just _starting_ in
on the Internet technology curve. The tools and systems we use today are going
to look ludicrous twenty to thirty years from now.

I'll let Saffo have the last word:

"Rule: Assume you are wrong. And forecast often."

~~~
radu_floricica
Speaking of teaching revolution, there is something I'd have thought so
blindingly useful and I still haven't been able to find: a site which would
teach you basic English, no matter what language you came from.

It could easily be used by 4 billion people... eventually everybody _has_ to
get online, and the value of the web is 1/100 without being able to read
English. And yet my mother is still paying through her nose to take slow
correspondence lessons, while I cringe every time I want to send her a link
and can't.

------
tibbon
When browsing Amazon.com, who thinks to themselves, "If I only had a
salesperson..."

We've become each other's salespeople. I trust the reviews of 100 people on
Amazon well over a single salesperson who has a vested interest in me making a
purchase.

~~~
Scriptor
The only problem with their review system is that paid reviews can skew
things. Still, I find that just reading a good sample (especially the negative
reviews) and seeing if the points brought up in them pertain to me works very
well.

~~~
Tautology
If enough reviewers like a product, I trust in the majority opinion even if
some people where paid for their responses.

------
Zak
_the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism:
salespeople._

Well _that_ didn't take long to change.

~~~
PostOnce
I was talking to my wife today about how a great many people _HATE_ being sold
things.

Part of the reason is that most salespeople are all, "HEY! BUY SOME MORE
USELESS CRAP!?!?" and not very "What can I do to help you, or make your
experience here more pleasant?"

~~~
lsb
If you go to Whole Foods Market, all of the salespeople there are in the
second category, which is why people enjoy shopping there even at the price
points they charge.

------
colonelxc
For those of you who didn't know, Stoll is the author of "The Cuckoo's Egg",
his (true) story of tracking down a hacker that broke into Lawrence Berkeley
National Lab's computers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_%28book%29>
[http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-
Espionag...](http://www.amazon.com/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-
Espionage/dp/0743411463)

~~~
barrkel
He's also the Klein bottle guy.

------
FluidDjango
For several years he was able to make good bucks off his Ludditism - enticing
some further hilarity from reviewers of his 2002 _High-Tech Heretic_ . So that
the Seattle Times said:

"Stoll's long experience with technology gives him authority. . . . His claims
are based on facts, logic and common sense." --[http://www.amazon.com/High-
Tech-Heretic-Reflections-Computer...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Tech-Heretic-
Reflections-Computer-Contrarian/dp/0385489765)

"Authority"? They forget to mention his capability as a far-sighted prophet :)

~~~
PostOnce
He fills a niche. The world requires a public face for every viewpoint. Alex
Jones, Pat Robertson, Al Sharpton, The Crazy Guy Down The Street. Everyone
with a viewpoint wants some more important authority to cite to support their
viewpoint.

------
docgnome
I think the real mistake the author made here was looking at the technology of
the time instead of the potential of that technology. That would be like
looking at Project Mercury and saying "Man couldn't possibly land on the moon
with that." And that's right. We didn't. It was only the predecessor to the
Apollo program.

------
Esspe
It took me 9 seconds to find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar vs 15 minutes
in 1995. Moore's law for information search?

~~~
xiaoma
I just highlighted "date of the Battle of Trafalgar" from your comment, right-
clicked chose "search google for..." from the resulting pop-up and had it in
about _one_ second.

I strongly suspect that no nearby shopping mall has done more business this
afternoon the entire internet has this month, either. Kurzweil, this guy is
not.

~~~
dmoney
Why a day for a shopping mall and a month for the internet? Also, why just one
nearby mall? Why not the entire internet vs. all shopping malls for an equal
amount of time?

Of course, we'd have to ignore the business the shopping malls do over the
internet. So maybe all in person transactions at all shopping malls vs. all
consumer purchases over the web, for an equal period.

------
ochiba
While some of his points are still valid today, it's clear the author has a
fundamental misunderstanding of disruptive innovations

~~~
nzmsv
It's easy to see what's disruptive once it's, um, disrupted. But we all still
mistake a clunky version 0.1 for the limit of what a technology can achieve.

Most recent example: Twitter and everyone saying it will never make any money.

------
thenduks
Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805), back when the people involved were
probably _sure_ ships would never be supplanted as the preferred method of
travel across the ocean.

~~~
necubi
Incidentally, I found that date in about five seconds, with Chrome's address
bar even auto-completing the name of the battle.

The article is amusingly myopic, and the author is completely unable to
imagine a world (not far from his own) where his little niggles are solved.

The internet is a global network of computers. Even if some of the
technologies built on it are limited (as many were in 1995), the underlying
network is near limitless in potential. Underestimating that potential will
always be a mistake.

~~~
radu_floricica
I like to jokingly call google "my external memory". It's fast enough that I
can actually use it as such in a IM conversation. When somebody mentions
something I'm not familiar with (like a movie) it's usually faster to google
it then to wait for them to answer my "what is X?".

A really big thing will be when we'll be able to do the same in a face to face
conversation. I really understand why google is trying so hard to be mobile.
Otherwise it would miss the next few big revolutions.

~~~
ArcticCelt
Last Christmas we were playing some kind of Jeopardy in my family and of
course everyone was trying to use their portable wireless device to cheat one
way or another. It's really an acceptably functional "external memory".

~~~
mambodog
This also works well on pub trivia machines.

------
shawndrost
Some commenters agree that the internet hasn't led to meaningful social
connection, but I disagree. Many shy people find it the key to their social
life. It's kept me in contact with several college friends, and I now think
our kids will know each other. It's a very connective medium.

------
oldgregg
___Mad man with a moment of clarity:_ __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.

~~~
isleyaardvark
Earlier today I went to the Facebook profile of a friend of mine who lives out
of state. He had uploaded a video of his child singing and had it on his
profile.

There are many more means of human contact than meeting at a coffee shop.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Exactly. The internet is a complement to, not a replacement for, face-to-face
contact.

See also: that little known and rarely used technology, the telephone.

------
jwr
If you actually read the article, you'll see many of his points are valid.

~~~
dasil003
He has a handful of good points (eg. the importance of human contact), but
most of his examples are laughable because he picked _precisely_ the things
that the Internet dominated (eg. daily newspaper).

His mistake was equating hype with falsehood—it's true that at the time people
were predicting that you would do anything and everything over the Internet,
and clearly that will not be the case anytime soon. However with technology as
powerful as the Internet, it was crazy to assume that it would not change the
way we live in any significant ways. Even trying to predict the things that
_wouldn't_ change proved to be an insurmountable obstacle for this guy.

~~~
PostOnce
"The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM
can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change
the way government works."

So he got the newspaper thing (partially) wrong. The government hasn't
changed, nor has education. The truth of the education thing is this: you can
learn anything on your own, but a teacher can tell you in 20 minutes what
might take you a month to figure out by yourself. Government will take a long
time to change. And (many) more people still rely on mainstream media outlets
for their news than any other source (though they may get their news from said
media outlet's online presence, rather than their print one.

~~~
MichaelApproved
The internet allows everyone _access_ competent teachers. There are so many
learning resources with videos and how-to articles on a large range of topics.
And the resources are extremely up-to-date. When something new is out you
don't have to wait for an update to a textbook to be published or a teacher to
learn it and include it in a lesson plan.

~~~
PostOnce
Teachers are only useful if they interact with you. Otherwise it's no better
than a book.

Mentorship. That's what makes teaching useful.

I'm talking about good teachers, not cheap public high-school instructors.

------
samd
He gave a talk at TED in 2006.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/clifford_stoll_on_everything.html>

~~~
alanthonyc
_"if you want to know what society is going to be like in twenty years, don't
ask a scientist...I don't know..."_

I guess he proved himself right.

------
zarski
Yeah, the Internet can be the good, bad, and the ugly. The good: I provide for
my family of 5 by creating and maintaining web applications (an occupation
non-existent at the time of my Univ. graduation); primarily because of the
Internet I have a home office where, among other benefits, I have been set
free from the unproductive, soulless cube-farm. Time would fail detailing
other benefits such as enhancements in maps, search, discussion and in general
increased access to knowledge. The bad: too much trivial information; work is
anytime, anywhere -- no hard boundaries; and temptation for attention sucking
( as the author stated "this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on
earth.") away offline life.

The ugly: pornography and perversion at a click; anonymous rage;

Like just about every area of life we need discipline and balance.

~~~
CamperBob
What's pornography?

------
dan_sim
yet, everyday, we still see that kind of prediction on HN. "why google buzz
won't take off" or "why the iPad is lame". People writing these kinds of title
don't know more than anybody else so please stop talking about the future that
way.

------
pstevensza
There have been a number of predictive clangers from people considered
luminaries in the field of technology. Stuff like "we'll never need more that
640K of RAM". Humans have been doing this for centuries, and we'll continue to
do it. While we're more advanced now than we've ever been, we're yet to think
of our best ideas. I like the fact that we'll able to look back in another
fifteen years and go "...didn't see THAT one coming".

~~~
dazmax
The trick is to try to recognize the patterns in the errors he is making. It
is remarkable how every one of the problems he raises has made a company or
organization that solved it very successful.

------
kwamenum86
all of the share icons below the headline are more than a little ironic

------
archon810
So basically reverse everything you see there and now you have everything that
exists now. Way to be close-minded, some-Newsweek-egghead-writer.

------
motters
Into the late 1990s I knew a few people who were of the opinion that the
internet was just another fad which would pass by.

------
docgnome
"I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two." Anyone else wanna
puke after reading that?

------
prgmatic
Hahaha, thank you for posting this! It's fun going back and reading
journalists' predictions.

------
mmphosis
"Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers."

------
rogermugs
this makes me very very happy:

" The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM
can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change
the way government works."

