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The Internet? Bah!
Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where--in the holy names of Education and Progress--important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.
STOLL is the author of "Silicon Snake Oil--Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," to be published by Doubleday in April.
© 1995
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Member Comments
Posted By: laurenh24 @ 04/14/2008 5:42:57 PM
Comment: Cheryl: If you see what he is submersed in and don't approve, why not do something about it? You're the parent. And I'm sure kids didn't stab each other and everyone was super friendly all the time back in the 1950s. Yes, his generation has been brought up online, but he's been brought up by you. Take your own advice and take control of your own family before you blame your child's personality on the Internet.
Posted By: gayathriherath @ 04/04/2008 11:16:27 AM
Comment: A team of successful entrepreneurs credited for www.SelectWealthSystem.com
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Posted By: gayathriherath @ 04/04/2008 11:16:00 AM
Comment: A team of successful entrepreneurs credited for www.SelectWealthSystem.com
A new home-based-business marketing system that provides the strategic high ground for internet marketing.
Pro Team Marketing uses an automated marketing system that is currently promoting a cutting-edge young company, entering the early growth stage, that targets the largest consumer base in the United States with their financial educational products.
http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com