The internet won't work.

Circa 1995 via Newsweek / Author Clifford Stoll

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.

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.

www.newsweek.com...

In other news, video games are just a fad, which will probably never rebound.

640kb, etc.

Because: Future. Couldn't have seen THAT coming.

Funny old man. And so will our children think of us..


Clifford got the hackers from Hannover, I will always think about that first as soon as I hear his name. Man, to whom did I lend his book again?!

There was also that brilliant mind that said he could only see the need for five computers world wide.

Hey, is this guy still alive and what does he do now for a living?

Funny as!

Almost as funny as the world renowned scientists who said man would be crushed in a train because humans could not travel at those insane speeds. That was before the first steam train.

P

reply to post by boncho

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.

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.

1) I NEVER read newspapers anymore because the internet has all the news I need and it's FREE. It also has a lot of alternative news sources which report on things that a mainstream newspaper would never report on.

2) I've learnt way more from online educational resources than I ever did at school, plus I get to learn in my own time when it suites me and I'm not being pressured or harassed to get things done. I basically have all the information I could ever want right at my fingertips, being only a simple google search away. I can also cross-reference my sources and make sure I'm getting the most up-to-date data and not learning from a text book which is several years old.

3) Computer networks have already changed the way government works. For example we have massive online petition websites which have indeed played a large role in changing government stances on crucial matters. And then we have websites like wikileaks which force the government to change their ways by exposing the corruption.

4) Ebay, Amazon, New Egg, and other such online e-commerce website get more business done in a single hour than your local mall will get done in a year. I don't have to drive anywhere, the product will get delivered straight to my door, and what's more is that I can get far better prices on my online purchases because I can search around from hundreds of different store choices. I also have a much better range of items to choose from.

5) There is a trustworthy way to send money over the internet and it's backed by hard math: it's called cryptocurrency (eg bitcoin).

I suppose that's a set of Cliff's Notes we don't want to rely too much on, eh? He seems to have pretty well been 100% wrong, across the board.

Well, at least he's sporting enough to talk about it.. lol...

As far as the mention of Bitcoin here? lol... Not in this life if my very life depended on it for the last breath to survive. Bitcoin performance The current economic options might be bad and the internet's development might suffer...but things like the dollar are the Rock of Gibraltar compared to junk that flies up and then down in $600 value swings inside a couple months time.

Almost sounds like something Cliff would have added a note about doing well with his other predictions back then, if it had existed to predict something about.

Well he is right about one thing. Daily news papers beat all online resources when changing a litter box.

reply to post by boncho


I find that I have mixed feelings about the internet. I blanket, point blank, totally and utterly refuse to do ANYTHING that could be crucial for my survival, using the net. I do not bank online, I do not use government websites, I do not use electronic currency of any sort, and I do not make purchases online using credit cards, or debit cards (both of which I also eschew completely).

The internet, from my perspective, is a tool which is best used for self advancement through learning, catharsis through expression, and for communicating ideas between people. I refuse to do business using it. The reason? Internet businesses do not have overheads, like proper shops and stores. They do not feed back into communities by employing a great many people, they do not rent large numbers of stores nation wide, and therefore do not make much of a positive impact on local, regional or even the national economy, and due to the nature of online business, many base themselves in tax havens, to avoid proper taxation.

In short, I believe that online business does more harm than good, takes money out of the economy, has an unfair competitive edge over real businesses, has harmed the jobs market by removing the need for customer service roles and actual storefronts, and is bad for the people of my country, despite the heavy discounts available using internet business. For those of us running real businesses, traditional stores run on traditional values, people trying to keep the covenant between a local business and the community it serves, these internet outlets make everything eight times harder than it has to be.

I refuse to use credit cards in stores because I believe that cash is the only legitimate way to purchase goods or services. I do not use an ATM card, because it is my responsibility as a customer of a bank, to make sure to enter the bank at a sensible time of day, produce my particulars as requested, and withdraw my funds (when I have some to withdraw at all) from an actual human being. People like me, who need to deal face to face with a human being, are the only reason banks still employ counter staff, and I am damned if I am helping remove yet another employment opportunity from our high streets.

When I am in the supermarket (on the rare occasion that I go to one, rather than using a local grocers store) I refuse to use their automated tills, because again, this is work that should be done by a person, a wage that should be paid, and I bloody well insist that it is.

Internet business murders the jobs market, in every place that it competes with genuine businesses. If it were up to me, I would ban internet stores which had no real world outlets. Amazon, Ebay, the whole bloody lot. They would have to either purchase or rent significant premises of retail business, or be prevented from trading in or with the UK and its residents.

That may make me all manner of supposedly unpleasant things, but I am afraid that the right of a person to have work, wages, and freedom from poverty, is to my mind, far greater than the right of any consumer to have things on a platter from companies which run on skeleton crews, and have virtually no overheads.