Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana - Newsweek
Ouch, Cliff. Well, I had to check it out, I expected a feel-good puff piece about how he likes people more than computers...
...oh, and that's exactly what it was. Let's do this:
(The following is the article, Copy/Pasted word for word, my comments are in italics)
Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana
No... No no no, if you do that I'm calling "Hype Alert" on the wheel... or the Telephone.
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.
Yup, being able to take and process votes in an efficient way will eliminate the need for an electoral college and make the government LITERALLY more democratic... continue...
Baloney.
The Heck you say.
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.
Hmm, Powerful Stuff... except it's not. Online databases HAVE replaced the daily paper... like the one you work for... Newsweek... where your article is hosted, which I read only because it was online. Also, CD-ROM? *sigh* Also, Computer Networks have already profoundly changed the way government works, even local government.
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.
Whoa... the Usenet? Quote from Wiki:"Usenet is one of the oldest computer network communications systems still in widespread use." Which would make it... um... yeah, the Shortwave Radio of the Internet. Good job, but what about the rest of the internet?
Also, might I suggest in the interest of saving trees that you continue to read books on "disc" (When was the last time you read a book on a computer? How about you download them?) Anyway, I don't know if you've heard about the Nook, Kindle, etc. E-books which are gaining a huge following. The display is something called e-paper, a bistable media that can be written and re-written by a microcontroller and is nearly indistinguishable from normal printed media to the naked eye... There's no glow, so you can whip out your big chunky book-light :D Just like you want to. Get it? you have ONE sheet of paper, onto which can be downloaded any book or newspaper you like. Hell it could automatically update the paper every morning for you... If it makes you feel better I'll take it off your coffee table and put it in your front yard every morning.I'm sure you knew about e-paper though, since you're obviously smarter than the director of the MIT Media Lab.
What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht [sic] the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors (obviously), reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later."
Where the hell ARE YOU? First of all, there are plenty of critics on the internet... take me for example. lol. Furthermore, the WORLD is a mass of unfiltered data. Luckily, the same technology that brought you the internet is also capable of making sense of this data. It's not a wasteland, it's a wonderland of undiscovered facts and buried proofs. I'm gonna start searching for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar now (6:30p)...
Okay it's now... oh, 6:30, it didn't even take a minute. Google, first result, Wikipedia, didn't even have to click it: "The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy"
Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.
Hold on chief... He put them where? A Bulletin board? I don't know how long you've been using the internet, but on here a bulletin board is even less effective than a REAL BULLETIN BOARD. Look here, State of Virginia, Bain for Congress, he has a FaceBook page for his campaign, let's see if he had more than 30 people log on... hmm... okay, slightly more: 1,074. Next?
Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.
Alright... So I've got to give it up now... By now none of you really believe that this guy is a really out of touch internet-moron and you've checked the date on the article... Yup. 1995. How quickly things have changed... maybe 15 years ago the internet was a piece of junk, but NEVER...EVER...say never.
I hope that today people realize that the internet isn't something different than "real life"... it IS real life. Just as real as talking on the phone, or going to a meeting... the people and opinions and creations that reside on cyberspace are all very real. And social networking is real interaction. Yes, this article was written before the Y2K Scare, but there are still people today that feel this way, and there will always be people like this, people who if they had been in charge, would not have let the internet become what it is today...
Don't fool yourself into thinking what you say on the internet isn't real, or that you're any less accountable for it, or that you can't hurt other people (or inspire other people) on the internet. The internet brings people together and that's a good thing no matter how you slice it. And don't trade progress for nostalgia... getting the morning paper may be nice, but it kills a lot of trees, and we can only make so many recycled paper cups out of them. lol.
Be well,
-Nick P.
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