ten years ago

[didymus]

Newsweek ran this insightful article about the internet, then still in its infancy:

The Internet? Bah!

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

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 cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with  handles, harassment, 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 Internet. Uh, sure.

. . . .

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.

I certainly can’t say he was wrong, nor would I give up my high-speed connection.
At best, one can use the Net for good or ill and I suspect it has been a large net gain to our standard of living and a huge loss to our culture.

 

[surritter]

Actually, I think his reaction of the hype is hype also. I’ve never heard people predict than online stuff will replace every facet of our lives. Maybe the newspaper is being replaced and I admit that web-based conference calls are now mainstream, but the rest of his article is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[mark_a]

What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact.

This statement nails it.

 

[Joe_5859]

Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

And now we have devices such as the Kindle where people do buy books and newspapers straight over the internet (and bring it to the beach).

A prophet, this guy is not.

 

[thomasf]

The date says 1995, that was 15 years ago.

 

[didymus]

The date says 1995, that was 15 years ago.

OOPS!!
As Grover used to say, “I am so embarrassed.”