Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 article.

[Argus Skyhawk]

I thought this article from 1995 was interesting. It makes some good points about the lack of human contact online, but it also gets so many things wrong about the future of the internet:

http://www.newsweek.com/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

 

[Hound of UIster]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

This article gets dugs up every year by some site so we can laugh at all those nineties fossils and how wrong they were about the internet. Ha ha.

Too bad it stopped being funny or worthwhile the first three dozen times especially when the author repudiated everything he has said.

 

[sojourner]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

I think there was a thread on this a few months ago.

 

[scotpens]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

Clifford Stoll was a well-known computer Luddite who, as previously posted, has since admitted he was wrong about the internet.

In other news, they said rock-and-roll was just a fad. And the automobile would never replace the horse.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

He might have been onto something with this part though:

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.

 

[Deckerd]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

He might have been onto something with this part though:

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.

Not true, since the internet seems to be the most effective form of mass communication yet, albeit subject to the vagaries of preference and chance.

 

[Pingfah]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

You'd think somebody who claims to have already used the internet for 2 decades would have noticed that it develops and changes. He approaches every issue as though the internet will not develop technologically beyond the point at which he wrote the article.

 

[FreezeC77]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

You'd think somebody who claims to have already used the internet for 2 decades would have noticed that it develops and changes. He approaches every issue as though the internet will not develop technologically beyond the point at which he wrote the article.

Seriously. As someone who is much younger than him, but was also observing the growth of the Internet I can't see why he wouldn't recognize things would change.

I first was able to use the Internet in 1989 since my Aunt worked for a University and had an account to dial into their network from home. She never used it, but allowed me to so I did from time to time but mainly just to read usenet groups. There was yet no World Wide Web. Within 3 or 4 years suddenly you had the WWW created and it would spread and in its infancy it was mainly text based web sites.

I remember creating web sites during that period and as graphic websites become more viable you still had to offer a "text-only" version because of so many people accessing via text only programs.

The difference between 1989 and 1995 in the Internet is enormous. I was a HS junior in 1995 and I'd say well over 50% of the students at that point had used the Internet at school for various purposes. In 1989 you might be able to count on one or two hands the number of high students in a class who had accessed and used the Internet. When we were taking English class and being taught how to cite references for papers they were actually teaching you how to cite internet sources. I can't imagine that was part of the lesson in 1989.

I can only imagine what the difference was from 1975 to 1995 if he had been using it for 20 years.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Re: Fascinatingly wrong predictions about the internet in a 1995 artic

He might have been onto something with this part though:

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.

Not true, since the internet seems to be the most effective form of mass communication yet, albeit subject to the vagaries of preference and chance.

Maybe I've been reading too many comments on Yahoo news articles.

The difference between 1989 and 1995 in the Internet is enormous. I was a HS junior in 1995 and I'd say well over 50% of the students at that point had used the Internet at school for various purposes. In 1989 you might be able to count on one or two hands the number of high students in a class who had accessed and used the Internet. When we were taking English class and being taught how to cite references for papers they were actually teaching you how to cite internet sources. I can't imagine that was part of the lesson in 1989.

I can only imagine what the difference was from 1975 to 1995 if he had been using it for 20 years.

Hmm, interesting, I guess there's a bit of an age gap thing here (I graduated in '89) but I always associate 1995 with Windows 95 which was really the first time I think of WWW which is when it all really exploded. It seemed to me prior to WWW the internet was only a resource for a select few and I had been online since about '85 or '86.