The Internet? Bah!

???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.

I cannot personally see any of the 'problems' cited by this article as being detrimental to such a severe degree, which Cheryl seemed to believe (except for the one about cyber-sex that's just gross!). Admittedly this article was written in 1995 and hasn't received an update since that publishing date, so maybe the author still agrees with what they have said to this day.
Who knows?

The internet offers a massive learning resource to everyone, and although we may not necessarily agree with all its content, we can all say that we certainly become more realistic with our opinions as a result of being submitted to such content.
Cheryl whether you like it or not the internet is an art form, which means it is a release expression and information. And you are unfortunately the modern day Plato we can all morally disagree with the content available over the internet. But irrespective of that the internet cannot be held responsible for the damages that people create for themselves.
Censorship leads to the removal of free speech and expression, which proves to make people more submissive.
Look at the Soviet Union other any other fascist dictatorship for the evidence.
This is probably why the past was so much more socially sound (or so you seem to infer with your comment), and more likely to be considered being so by the majority of people during that era, who were lacking the knowledge of the reality of affairs worldwide, or at least to the some extent with information that is provided for us now in the form of the internet.
Censoring or controlling the content placed on the internet goes against the 'more' democratic world we are supposed to have been brought up into, so my question to you is can you blame the ills of society and the world on the 21st century youth who wishes to retain the knowledge of the real state of affairs of the world morally, socially and politically?
And forever condemn them to the media based message of a more violent youth which are nearing adulthood and the array of problems they will bring to society with them. In reality what you should want to have monitored instead is the tabloid based news stories that condemns such a mentally challenging digital information and commerce system.

But it has been a pleasant experience to read this article and view it from a perspective where this advancement of knowledge was new and brought along with it an array ethical and social problems. I like the thought that most people can look back upon the article and disagree with the majority of the points made within it.

I just think it is funny that an article from 1995, which claims there are no editors on the internet proves that with all the spelling errors...It's been 13 years and no one has edited this yet?

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

And how is this any different than what passes for "Journalism" these days?

If it's 13 years old, remember that's 65 COMPUTER years, and IT'S STILL TRUE, so the guy is Nostradamus.
He's right about human contact. Those young geniuses who "get it" with computers click away all day, but start a conversation with them and they say Yup or Nope.
Ready to get "outsourced" haircuts or bartenders?
I like computers to get work done, but the Internet at home?
I'm afraid of the time I would waste!
Why do I need to comment here? A waste!
But I enjoyed the article.

Anoo: http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554
Pmp Nerdz: The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval battle west of Cape Trafalgar in the province of Cádiz in south-west Spain. A British fleet of 27 ships of the line destroyed an allied French and Spanish fleet of 33 ships of the line on 21 October 1805 in the most decisive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars.
Pmp Nerdz: Google Search. First Link. First sentence in article.
Pmp Nerdz: 15 seconds.
Pmp Nerdz: I think he's using Archie or Veronica on USEnet to search.
Pmp Nerdz: He's been online for 20 years, but I don't think he's surpased the usage of Internet circa 1989.
Anoo: Archie rocks
Pmp Nerdz: Lolipop Dragon.
Pmp Nerdz: There's an educational filmstrip I remember from Grade school.
Pmp Nerdz: or how about "And Then It Happened" the filmstrip that used scare tactics to tell the kids to sit down and shut the fcuk up on the school bus.
Pmp Nerdz: Or the one in highschool about drugs that showed the guy turn into a lizard. That one effing rocked. I wish I actually remembered the name of that one.
Anoo: oooh, yeah - i remember those
Anoo: bet you can find 'em on google video somewhere
Pmp Nerdz: wayback machine or archive project probably has them.
Anoo: ooh. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1285725859935620263&q=and+then+it+happened&total=20296&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2
Pmp Nerdz: This guy doesn't dislike the internet. He just want's the soccer moms, church ladies and Blue Collar dads who have surpased his usage to get the fcuk off of his internet so he can feel L33T again.
Pmp Nerdz: Bet he was a hacker groupie in college.
Pmp Nerdz: One of those guys that we tricked into thinking we had hacked the grade system and done them the favor of changing their grades.
Pmp Nerdz: Loved in when those guys went home for the semester and learned that htey had flunked out.
Pmp Nerdz: I'm gonna post this as a discussion after the article. Bet someone will pick apart my spleling.

Sounds to me like the same kind of talk that preceded the US Mail, the telephone, the automobile, and a good many other things we take pretty much for granted today. In fact, the single best sign that progress is truly underway is the advent of the naysayers. There will come a day when internet access will be as common as electricity. You simply won't have a home or apartment where it isn't standard. Refinement of technology will progress as any science/technology does and all the doubt in the world will be no better at halting it than it's ever been.

Admittedly, unmoderated and unedited content has the majority. (my post proves the point :)
Also, virtual education still hasn't really caught on, and it seems to be gaining ground quite slowly compared to other things.

Also, had it not been for things like Google, we might still be in the search quandary the author was in.
The major point of disagreement I have with the article is the assertion that salespeople are capitalism's necessity. I don't need a salesperson to buy a book, buy my groceries, or to pick up some office supplies. Even on big-ticket items, I have seen many people decide on a purchase beforehand, and treat the salesperson basically as a sales clerk.

My post negates this article in its entirety.

Well, he called the death of Usenet. But I remember what crap the Internet was then. We were still pushing the use of Gopher at the University of Minnesota. But 1995 is also when I learned HTML, started building online, and got going on a career. And now, here I am, in my bed, telecommuting and feeding my Amazon.com ordering addiction.

This is a great article to test people on whether or not they read the article till the end and pay attention to the appropriate meta data about the article (ie, the date) before commenting.

It's too bad you are contributing to the mis-infomation highway. Electronic books are not limited to laptops. Dedicated ebook readers have been around for years. Small handheld devices with power saving e ink screens, Sony ereader and the Amazon Kindle are just two. Without technology, we would still be chasing down bison with our bare hands.

Please read another work by this author http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo's_Egg

@jdempey

you're an idiot. this article was written in 1995 - google and wikipedia did not even exist yet, of course you encountered different results.

looks like my man missed the whole point of this digg story (as im sure you must have come from there or another social website as one does not simple stumble across mediocre 13 year old news stories too often).

though much of what the author of this article wrote seems like bullshit now it was legitimate thinking in context with the time it was written.

btw totally just had an XKCD "someone is wrong on the internet" moment.

I just Googled "battle of trafalgar" and followed the very first link, to the Wikipedia entry. It contained the date of the battle. I'm not sure about the other results you encountered but I assure you, the Internet is an immensely helpful research tool. While it will never replace human interaction, it can certainly facilitate ever-greater knowledge-sharing and new possibilities for learning.