I recently ran across an article from the February 25th 1995 issue of Newsweek (http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html) written by Clifford Stoll entitled “The Internet? Bah!”. In it he asks “Do our computer pundits lack all common sense?” and states that online databases won’t replace our daily newspaper that CD-ROMs can’t take the place of a competent teacher and that computer networks won’t change the way government works…
Funny thing is that he’s dead wrong. Many daily newspapers have resorted to putting their news online, you can read for a fee, or sometimes you can go to sites that have it up for free… Yahoo News, CNN, and many other places put it up for free. Computer based training supplements competent teachers now, there are many colleges that offer courses online where you do the same work as you would when attending classroom based instruction, except that you have to be more motivated to not procrastinate your work. Finally, government has moved many (not all) functions online, You can eFile your tax return. If you’re unemployed, you apply online, most interaction with the Social Security Administration is accomplished online… the list goes on…
Stoll complains about how “word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers”, about electronic publishing and how the “myopic glow of a clunky computer” is unpleasant compared to the “friendly pages of a book”. Funny thing is that Mr. Stoll didn’t take into account advances in technology; we now have sleek elegant e-readers like the Nook, the Kindle and the iPad. In 1995 he doubts “we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet.” He couldn’t be further from the truth…
Another complaint is about how the “Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data”. Enter Google… Mr. Stoll was writing about things as they were in February 1995. The Internet was a fledgling network with only about 5.8 million machines hooked to it… Today we’re rapidly approaching the exhaustion of nearly 4.2 billion IPv4 addresses. In 1995 we didn’t have Google to filter, index and catalog it.
Mr. Stoll complains that “What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact”. Now we have Facebook… Instead of telephones, families and friends keep in contact with each other from across town, across the state, across the country or around the world. Today, many people use the Internet to remain in touch on his “electronic wonderland” of the so-called information superhighway.
My opinion is that Mr. Stoll didn’t take innovation and invention into account. He could not possibly have seen Google, or Facebook, He couldn’t have seen the potential for video on demand through YouTube. He couldn’t have seen smartphones, digital cameras or any of the other advances in technology that we now take for granted.
So where will we be in another 16 years? I don’t know, but I’ve always been an early adopter and in the words of Timbuk 3, “The Futures So Bright”.