The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't

[BERIGAN]

I wonder if this writer's Grandfather thought the Horseless buggy was a waist of time too!

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

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Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? 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.

Consider today's online world. 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 cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? 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.

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[Jazzmoose]

Seems like a pretty accurate description of the internet today, in many ways. It reminds me of the people who told us how neat it would be to have a computerized house, controlled by a single panel that we could use to control every aspect of our house. This for a culture that will spend thirty minutes searching for the TV remote instead of walking over to the TV to change the channel...

[porcy62]

This for a culture that will spend thirty minutes searching for the TV remote instead of walking over to the TV to change the channel...

Do you mean I can change the channel on TV?

[ejp626]

Seems like a pretty accurate description of the internet today, in many ways. It reminds me of the people who told us how neat it would be to have a computerized house, controlled by a single panel that we could use to control every aspect of our house. This for a culture that will spend thirty minutes searching for the TV remote instead of walking over to the TV to change the channel...

I guess I don't quite get your point, Moose. Some things have not happened (mass numbers of people telecommuting), but most of the things that the writer pooh-poohed have precisely come to pass. Kindle is taking over the way people read, though its take-up is a little slow. But certainly newspapers are predominantly read on-line -- and are collapsing because they can't figure out a workable paywall. And as for buying books, CDs and movies on-line? I'd say 80-90% of my music purchases are on-line rather than brick and mortar, and 95+% of books and movies.

[Jazzmoose]

Well, I mean for instance, his point about computers being basically a noise machine rather than an information machine. Plus his point about the reduction of human contact, since we're all so busy talking to people we'll never know on a face-to-face basis. Christ, we've gotten to the point that people who are together don't even speak to each other because they're too busy texting other people.

[ejp626]

Well, I mean for instance, his point about computers being basically a noise machine rather than an information machine. Plus his point about the reduction of human contact, since we're all so busy talking to people we'll never know on a face-to-face basis. Christ, we've gotten to the point that people who are together don't even speak to each other because they're too busy texting other people.

Yes, I can see that. There is some elevated debate going on, but for the most part tribalism and mug-slinging rule. That doesn't change the fact that the internet is not a fad, as the writer was intimating, and that it does change the way Americans shop (mostly for the better) and interact socially (for worse).