The Internet is Stupid

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I would hate to be the author of this 1995 article. Almost everything he said “wouldn’t happen” actually did come true. Making matters worse, the article is reprinted on the internet today for all to read.

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.
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that's exactly why no one should ever say something isn't going to happen in the future. anything is possible
 
Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them--one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connectios, try again later."
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http://www.google.com/search?q=the+...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

hmm.. the first 4 result tells you the date of the battle and the fifth result is this author bitching about not finding the date..

Sounds like he's pretty butthurt over something.
 
the internet is the last thing we have in an ever-growing fascist world. i just fear the day when it might be used against us, but for now its definitely the leader in freedom fighting tools.
 
mashie said:
Google didn't exist in 1995. :p
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Well there was webcrawler lol

I remember I used to swear on webcrawler.com even after Google and Yahoo was born. Back then it was a damn good search engine, albeit slow as hell.
 
Azhar said:
Well there was webcrawler lol

I remember I used to swear on webcrawler.com even after Google and Yahoo was born. Back then it was a damn good search engine, albeit slow as hell.
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Edit: out of curiosity I checked to see if webcrawler was still there. Seems hey are - they post results from all of the popular engines.
 
http://www.kleinbottle.com/

this is what he does now. He does seem bitter. He doesn't allow computers in the classroom where he teaches 8th graders college level physics. Wiki says he's mostly a full time dad.

Just goes to show, whatever you post can haunt you 4evar.
 
Heh, he wrote that just before the dam broke, and the confluence of relatively cheap computers and broadband broke the internet wide open to general multimedia, leading to explosive growth of the internet.

Talk about bad timing. :D
 
Pkirk618 said:
http://www.kleinbottle.com/

this is what he does now. He does seem bitter. He doesn't allow computers in the classroom where he teaches 8th graders college level physics. Wiki says he's mostly a full time dad.

Just goes to show, whatever you post can haunt you 4evar.
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He teaches 8th graders college level physics? Well that just settles it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Hmm, the nerve of him saying computers can't replace a good teacher.
 
"...And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic. Baloney."

Well, he definitely nailed that one.
 
Wow, this article is full of fail with just about every other word. The fact that someone can produce such a miraculously bad article for Newsweek makes you have to question how awful articles can possibly be that are printed today.

I especially got a huge laugh out of the assumption that it's a bad thing that shopping online doesn't have sales people. FUCK sales people. They are the very reason I hate going into stores to begin with. Get the hell out of my face, or just answer a question when I come to you and then shut the fuck up.

No, I don't need a <insert retail name> credit card.
 
Bgrngod said:
I especially got a huge laugh out of the assumption that it's a bad thing that shopping online doesn't have sales people. FUCK sales people. They are the very reason I hate going into stores to begin with. Get the hell out of my face, or just answer a question when I come to you and then shut the fuck up.

No, I don't need a <insert retail name> credit card.
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I had the exact same thought. I loathe sales people. I never need their help finding anything or "deciding what to buy". I came to pick up something, buy it and get out. I don't need human assistance for any part of that.

I'm hoping self-checkouts are the way of the retail future.
 
Ooooo new idea for Google.... implement a condition on a search... TIME based.

Ass Monkey [1995] ......

And the results would be what you would have gotten for the search in 1995. :D
 
RS3RS said:
I'm hoping self-checkouts are the way of the retail future.
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The best part about self-checkouts is all the people who don't use them. I almost never have to wait for self checkout, no matter how busy the store is. That will change over time I'm sure, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts :p
 
Spewn said:
The best part about self-checkouts is all the people who don't use them. I almost never have to wait for self checkout, no matter how busy the store is. That will change over time I'm sure, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts :p
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The worst part is the people who DO use them but aren't capable of doing so and end up needing the clerk that manages the 4 self-checkouts to come over and pretty much do the entire thing for them.. Kind of defeats the purpose of having self-checkout. But I definitely agree with you on the best part.
 
"...this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth." That's the only fucking thing he got right. Real Nostradamus this guy.:eek:
 
mashie said:
I used astalavista.box.sk
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X2.


This guy also predicted that New Orleans would never win the Superbowl, we'd never have a black President, the DJIA would NEVER hit 10,000 and no one could ever eat an entire wheel of cheese.

Yes, I did eat an entire wheel of cheese. Anyone got some prune juice?
 
Filthy Fernandez said:
X2.


This guy also predicted that New Orleans would never win the Superbowl, we'd never have a black President, the DJIA would NEVER hit 10,000 and no one could ever eat an entire wheel of cheese.

Yes, I did eat an entire wheel of cheese. Anyone got some prune juice?
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No but I'll send you a chisel and a spoon.
 
What a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking!!

I think most of you have been unduly harsh with your criticism about this 1995 article. Back then I didn't have the slightest clue what the Internet was going to be like in 15 years and I doubt most of you could have guessed correctly a quarter of what actually has transpired since Clifford Stoll wrote his article. Bill Gates hardly touched on the Internet in his 1995 book, only doing so in the 1996 revised edition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead) so it is kind of silly to smack down a guy for his predictions when more computer savvy people weren't predicting much better than him.

In partial defense of Stoll, he was surveying the Internet landscape as of early 1995 and found it lacking many things which he felt would hinder the growth of it's use. I am sure most of his criticisms were valid to one degree or another. He was looking at a world with people using 14.4 and 28.8 modems to hunt for websites that weren't cataloged very effectively. And when a website was found, it might have taken MINUTES, not seconds like today, to have a page fully download, even though most were fairly barren with just text as even a couple of photos and/or graphics would slow things to a mindnumbing crawl even on small 640 x 480 screens (see how some websites looked back in 1996.. http://www.alextips.com/the-mighty-internet/popular-websites-in-1996-and-now/). It was a world that was blocked to the many people who were using AOL.. a world where there was hardly any video or music content to view.. where most of the websites were not professionally made nor owned by corporations.. a world that had less than 100,000 websites (many of which were .edu) compared to over 160 million in 2008 (according to royal.pingdom.com).

Stoll's REAL failure in his article was lack of vision, of not imagining that the Internet was just a baby in 1995, just having been born, and not seeing what it might become when it started to mature. He didn't foresee that phone modems would get faster, then people would switch to broadband. He didn't foresee screen sizes getting bigger so more content could be viewed.. that corporations spending millions on making content to view on websites.. that file sharing would take of.. and that more people would understand what the Internet was, how to harness it's power in almost infinite ways and that money could be made by using it.

Stoll was also unfortunate in that if he had just waited another year or so, perhaps he wouldn't have taken such a dim view on things. His article appeared just as the Internet started to explode! It appeared 5 months after Netscape was launched.. just 3 months after Amazon started.. a month after Yahoo started. When he wrote his article, there was no Google.. no Napster.. eBay started 7 months later.. no Craigslist.. no MapQuest.. no Blogger.. no Wikipedia.. no Myspace.. no Facebook.. no Rapidshare.. no Flickr.. no Hulu. According to royal.pingdom.com, 47 of 2009's top 50 most visited websites (according to Alexa rank) were not even created as of January 1st, 1995, and 15 of the those top 50 sites were started in either 1995 or 1996, easily the most of any 2 combined years from 1992 to 2009.

Of course the Internet of 2010 is vasty different than it was in 1995, just as it will be very different in 2025, and it is easy with 20/20 hindsight to see that Stoll was way off in his article. But do any of you feel you can make accurate, SPECIFIC predictions on how the Internet will be like in 2025 and what innovations, trends, and technology will be driving it's use? At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. I don't think he was a dope for what he wrote as there was no certainty of the Internet's long-term success on Feb. 27, 1995. At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. What he didn't take into account was the speed that technology enters our lives, how much people want to use that technology & integrate it into their lives, and all the various ways people will find to use that technology in ways almost unimaginable.
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
What a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking!!

I think most of you have been unduly harsh with your criticism about this 1995 article. Back then I didn't have the slightest clue what the Internet was going to be like in 15 years and I doubt most of you could have guessed correctly a quarter of what actually has transpired since Clifford Stoll wrote his article. Bill Gates hardly touched on the Internet in his 1995 book, only doing so in the 1996 revised edition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead) so it is kind of silly to smack down a guy for his predictions when more computer savvy people weren't predicting much better than him.

In partial defense of Stoll, he was surveying the Internet landscape as of early 1995 and found it lacking many things which he felt would hinder the growth of it's use. I am sure most of his criticisms were valid to one degree or another. He was looking at a world with people using 14.4 and 28.8 modems to hunt for websites that weren't cataloged very effectively. And when a website was found, it might have taken MINUTES, not seconds like today, to have a page fully download, even though most were fairly barren with just text as even a couple of photos and/or graphics would slow things to a mindnumbing crawl even on small 640 x 480 screens (see how some websites looked back in 1996.. http://www.alextips.com/the-mighty-internet/popular-websites-in-1996-and-now/). It was a world that was blocked to the many people who were using AOL.. a world where there was hardly any video or music content to view.. where most of the websites were not professionally made nor owned by corporations.. a world that had less than 100,000 websites (many of which were .edu) compared to over 160 million in 2008 (according to royal.pingdom.com).

Stoll's REAL failure in his article was lack of vision, of not imagining that the Internet was just a baby in 1995, just having been born, and not seeing what it might become when it started to mature. He didn't foresee that phone modems would get faster, then people would switch to broadband. He didn't foresee screen sizes getting bigger so more content could be viewed.. that corporations spending millions on making content to view on websites.. that file sharing would take of.. and that more people would understand what the Internet was, how to harness it's power in almost infinite ways and that money could be made by using it.

Stoll was also unfortunate in that if he had just waited another year or so, perhaps he wouldn't have taken such a dim view on things. His article appeared just as the Internet started to explode! It appeared 5 months after Netscape was launched.. just 3 months after Amazon started.. a month after Yahoo started. When he wrote his article, there was no Google.. no Napster.. eBay started 7 months later.. no Craigslist.. no MapQuest.. no Blogger.. no Wikipedia.. no Myspace.. no Facebook.. no Rapidshare.. no Flickr.. no Hulu. According to royal.pingdom.com, 47 of 2009's top 50 most visited websites (according to Alexa rank) were not even created as of January 1st, 1995, and 15 of the those top 50 sites were started in either 1995 or 1996, easily the most of any 2 combined years from 1992 to 2009.

Of course the Internet of 2010 is vasty different than it was in 1995, just as it will be very different in 2025, and it is easy with 20/20 hindsight to see that Stoll was way off in his article. But do any of you feel you can make accurate, SPECIFIC predictions on how the Internet will be like in 2025 and what innovations, trends, and technology will be driving it's use? At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. I don't think he was a dope for what he wrote as there was no certainty of the Internet's long-term success on Feb. 27, 1995. At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. What he didn't take into account was the speed that technology enters our lives, how much people want to use that technology & integrate it into their lives, and all the various ways people will find to use that technology in ways almost unimaginable.
Click to expand...

http://www.alextips.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/white-house-1996.jpg
:confused: feedback@www.whitehouse.gov

Can you do that? Include www when emailing?
 
Insula Gilliganis said:
What a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking!!

I think most of you have been unduly harsh with your criticism about this 1995 article. Back then I didn't have the slightest clue what the Internet was going to be like in 15 years and I doubt most of you could have guessed correctly a quarter of what actually has transpired since Clifford Stoll wrote his article. Bill Gates hardly touched on the Internet in his 1995 book, only doing so in the 1996 revised edition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead) so it is kind of silly to smack down a guy for his predictions when more computer savvy people weren't predicting much better than him.

In partial defense of Stoll, he was surveying the Internet landscape as of early 1995 and found it lacking many things which he felt would hinder the growth of it's use. I am sure most of his criticisms were valid to one degree or another. He was looking at a world with people using 14.4 and 28.8 modems to hunt for websites that weren't cataloged very effectively. And when a website was found, it might have taken MINUTES, not seconds like today, to have a page fully download, even though most were fairly barren with just text as even a couple of photos and/or graphics would slow things to a mindnumbing crawl even on small 640 x 480 screens (see how some websites looked back in 1996.. http://www.alextips.com/the-mighty-internet/popular-websites-in-1996-and-now/). It was a world that was blocked to the many people who were using AOL.. a world where there was hardly any video or music content to view.. where most of the websites were not professionally made nor owned by corporations.. a world that had less than 100,000 websites (many of which were .edu) compared to over 160 million in 2008 (according to royal.pingdom.com).

Stoll's REAL failure in his article was lack of vision, of not imagining that the Internet was just a baby in 1995, just having been born, and not seeing what it might become when it started to mature. He didn't foresee that phone modems would get faster, then people would switch to broadband. He didn't foresee screen sizes getting bigger so more content could be viewed.. that corporations spending millions on making content to view on websites.. that file sharing would take of.. and that more people would understand what the Internet was, how to harness it's power in almost infinite ways and that money could be made by using it.

Stoll was also unfortunate in that if he had just waited another year or so, perhaps he wouldn't have taken such a dim view on things. His article appeared just as the Internet started to explode! It appeared 5 months after Netscape was launched.. just 3 months after Amazon started.. a month after Yahoo started. When he wrote his article, there was no Google.. no Napster.. eBay started 7 months later.. no Craigslist.. no MapQuest.. no Blogger.. no Wikipedia.. no Myspace.. no Facebook.. no Rapidshare.. no Flickr.. no Hulu. According to royal.pingdom.com, 47 of 2009's top 50 most visited websites (according to Alexa rank) were not even created as of January 1st, 1995, and 15 of the those top 50 sites were started in either 1995 or 1996, easily the most of any 2 combined years from 1992 to 2009.

Of course the Internet of 2010 is vasty different than it was in 1995, just as it will be very different in 2025, and it is easy with 20/20 hindsight to see that Stoll was way off in his article. But do any of you feel you can make accurate, SPECIFIC predictions on how the Internet will be like in 2025 and what innovations, trends, and technology will be driving it's use? At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. I don't think he was a dope for what he wrote as there was no certainty of the Internet's long-term success on Feb. 27, 1995. At least Stoll had guts enough to print his thoughts for prosperity to prove him right or wrong. What he didn't take into account was the speed that technology enters our lives, how much people want to use that technology & integrate it into their lives, and all the various ways people will find to use that technology in ways almost unimaginable.
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The quarterbacking took place Sunday, not Monday :-P

As for 2025, that's easy. The world's ending in 2012, so there won't be anything in 2025!

I'll let you all quote me in 2025 if I'm wrong! ;-)
 
RS3RS said:
I had the exact same thought. I loathe sales people. I never need their help finding anything or "deciding what to buy". I came to pick up something, buy it and get out. I don't need human assistance for any part of that.

I'm hoping self-checkouts are the way of the retail future.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this commonly increasing trend of people prefering "non-salesperson interacting" is DUE to the internet. Nowadays, most tech litterate people research online, what it is they are going to buy. They use the internet to read multiple reviews of the product, compare the products features with other products, and compare prices for said product.

That's what salespersons used to be for. Today, you walk into a Sears to buy a new TV, you probably know the exact model you want, and how much it will be, before you even walk through the door.

Back in 1995, you had to ask the sales people what the differences were between all the TVs, and which were best rated, etc.
 
LOL, well, he's got something in common w/ Bill Gates in terms of making a prediction that went so wrong. Gates once proclaimed that computers will never need more than 640 kB of memory. Right. :D
 
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.
Click to expand...

I find your lack of vision, disturbing.


The guy that wrote this must have been a technophobe, or was frightened that technology would kill his career...I would hope for the latter, since ignorance is bliss, in this guys case.

You cannot fight the future, especially the technological one.
 
You can tell the article is from the 90's by the use of the word cyberspace ^^ Those were the days. When the internet was something new and cool. Almost makes me want to watch Hackers again ^^
 
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