Clifford Stoll: Why Web Won't Be Nirvana | Newsweek Technology

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK

From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

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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.

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.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, 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 connectios, try again later."

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.

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.

???It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solutions to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.??? ???Thomas Edison, 1895

At least Mr. Edison gets somewhat of a pass since airplanes and aerodynamics was new and there wasn???t to be any examples of a viable fixed wing flying craft for another 8 years. At the time he said this no one even had the foggiest idea of how to make something heavier than air fly.

True enough the internet in 1995 was just getting ready to move into the mainstream. The possibilities for it are and remain endless and even the dimmest bulb could extrapolate possibilities. I was there and remember the excitement. This article was very short sighted even taking into account the time it was written. It is the equivalent of someone looking at a blank canvas and declaring that no one will ever draw anything on it. I think its amazing how utterly wrong this guy was about nearly everything with the exception of some social ramifications. What???s more astonishing is how sure he was about it. He doesn???t get the same pass Mr. Edison got because he had all the knowledge to extrapolate the exact opposite but chose the easier naysayer route rather than use his imagination.

Its for this reason that I get a hearty laugh out of most skeptics and naysayers. Every new idea or technology will either fail or bring the world to an end according to them. There simply can't be anymore big thoughts or amazing discoveries to be made in their minds. For them we are always living at the height of what our species can do and anything new is unnecessary or a threat (mostly to their narrow view of the world). I imagine these people have been around since modern humans first stepped on to the scene, they probably doubted fire would have any practical use.

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Posted By: diertac @ 11/18/2009 7:06:53 PM

Actually, it was much more vile and vitriolic back then. FB and Twitter are far more civilized than Usenet, a medium where moderation was impossible, anonymity was easy and stalking/threats/hate speech were common. The Internet has become much more civilized, although forums and bulletin boards of today can get pretty close to the anger that abounded on Usenet, if there are lax moderators.
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Posted By: cobaltblue1975 @ 11/13/2009 5:52:04 PM

???It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solutions to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.??? ???Thomas Edison, 1895

At least Mr. Edison gets somewhat of a pass since airplanes and aerodynamics was new and there wasn???t to be any examples of a viable fixed wing flying craft for another 8 years. At the time he said this no one even had the foggiest idea of how to make something heavier than air fly.

True enough the internet in 1995 was just getting ready to move into the mainstream. The possibilities for it are and remain endless and even the dimmest bulb could extrapolate possibilities. I was there and remember the excitement. This article was very short sighted even taking into account the time it was written. It is the equivalent of someone looking at a blank canvas and declaring that no one will ever draw anything on it. I think its amazing how utterly wrong this guy was about nearly everything with the exception of some social ramifications. What???s more astonishing is how sure he was about it. He doesn???t get the same pass Mr. Edison got because he had all the knowledge to extrapolate the exact opposite but chose the easier naysayer route rather than use his imagination.

Its for this reason that I get a hearty laugh out of most skeptics and naysayers. Every new idea or technology will either fail or bring the world to an end according to them. There simply can't be anymore big thoughts or amazing discoveries to be made in their minds. For them we are always living at the height of what our species can do and anything new is unnecessary or a threat (mostly to their narrow view of the world). I imagine these people have been around since modern humans first stepped on to the scene, they probably doubted fire would have any practical use.
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Posted By: NotSoBigMac @ 11/12/2009 9:44:57 AM

What he was (and is) right about is, that when everyone is shouting, few are listening. That is very true.