HYPE ALERT! The Internet

[Ksyrup]

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The Internet? Bah!

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK
Feb 27, 1995 Issue

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 cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, 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 Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. 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 connections, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames--but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

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.

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URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/106554

[MikeVic]

Is this real? Seems like he got every single aspect wrong!

[Ksyrup]

I believe it is real.

And somehow, I think that article and this one are connected....



2008.03.24 • 14:55 EDT

Another home trashed through Craigslist ad


There's a priceless moment in this Associated Press story about Robert Salisbury, a man in Oregon who came home on Sunday afternoon to the shock of dozens of people ransacking his belongings.

They'd been alerted by a Craiglist post which falsely advertised Salisbury's stuff -- including his horse! -- as free for the taking:

On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.

"I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did...."

Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch.

The trespassers, armed with printouts of the ad, tried to brush him off. "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," Salisbury said. "It boggles the mind."

For a while now, I've been arguing that the Internet, as great as it is, sometimes distorts our understanding of reality, pushing us to accept as true stuff we merely hope to be true. I've used political examples, mainly, but this one's monetary.

If someone tells you that someone is giving away a house of stuff for free, you'd never believe them. But if it's online, well then, maybe there's something to it?

After all, this is the second time -- at least -- that a home has been ransacked in response to a fake Craigslist ad. Last year Laurie Raye, a woman in Tacoma, Wash., came home to a house stripped bare -- her furniture, her front door, her kitchen sink, everything was gone.

Prosecutors later charged Raye's niece, Nichole Blackwell, with burglary, malicious mischief, and criminal impersonation for posting a Craigslist ad which posted Raye's address and read: "Moving out ... House being demolished. Come and take whatever you want, nothing is off limits." (Blackwell was upset, police said, because Raye had evicted Blackwell's mother from the house.)

Salisbury got the license plate numbers of some of the people stealing his stuff; police say that folks caught with Salisbury's items will be charged.

Keep that in mind the next time you see a Craigslist ad too good to be true. It likely is. Nobody gives a house -- or a horse -- away for free on the Web without asking any questions. It just doesn't happen.

So if you spot an ad promising such a bounty, use Craiglist's flagging button to pull down the post. Whatever you do, don't go rummaging through a house; just because the Internet said you could do it doesn't make it right.

hxxp://machinist.salon.com/blog/2008/03/24/craigslist_free_ad/index.html?source=rss&aim=/tech/machinist/blog

[Lorena]

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data.

He's right:

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=44091&highlight=nutt

[heybrad]

Is this who wrote it?

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/89/pics/89qupdate3.jpg

[JeeberD]

Are the typos in the original article? Gonna have to check out Snopes on this one...

Edit: Nothing on Snopes after a cursory search.

*shrug*

[SirFozzie]

The URL resolves to that.. looks real.

[st.cronin]

Human contact is hardly nirvana, either.

[Greyroofoo]

Human contact is hardly nirvana, either.

depends on the kind of contact

[Cringer]

Point and click:

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames--but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.


I wayyyyy over estimated the computer in teaching, at least with my own daughter. With home schooling we thought we could use the computer a ton. My daughter loves being on a computer, we like them, it should be a great way to go.

Nope, I was wrong there. We have gone to almost all 'book' work for her now and I feel it's much better all-around for her, as well as better for us. The computer is a great tool for us to come up with work for her offline, and the occasional break from books and worksheets for her with science programs or spelling games.

[Marc Vaughan]

I have to say I agree with a large part of the article - there are great things to be said about computers and the internet but its not a replacement for the personal touch no matter how much its sold as one.

For instance there are items I'd never purchase online because I want to try them on/see them first, similarly with learning its much easier asking questions face to face where people can easily demonstrate something physically to you on occassion than it is typing it into a computer.

(and trust me as someone who telecommutes and scans his scribbles in to email them to someone in london to make sense of I know what I'm talking about ;) )

That being said there is a huge amount of positive with computers and the internet - being able to order things in seconds, enabling talented individuals to create and market products easily without a lot of money behind them, being able to research local information easily etc.

'tis swings and roundabouts as the article indicates its not a Nirvana - there is good there, but it has its limits.

The next step imho is to remove the link between the net and computers - once you are able to access them more intuitively from other devices more people will do so, a lot of people still see computers and the internet as something complicated and better left alone.

(and no I don't see the Iphone as the start of thing - although its a cool device its still too geeky/expensive for the masses)

[Shkspr]

Hard to believe that a Berkley hippy who became famous because he caught someone trying to steal nuclear secrets over the Internet would be so pessimistic about the potential of the medium, huh?

[kcchief19]

Hard to believe that a Berkley hippy who became famous because he caught someone trying to steal nuclear secrets over the Internet would be so pessimistic about the potential of the medium, huh?
Cliff Stoll published Silicon Snakeoil when I was in college and working at the university NPR station, and I did a long form story and interview with Stoll about the book and his thoughts. And I absolutely thought it was ironic than a pioneer of online networks was the one sounding the cautionary tone.

Stoll is wrong about certain things -- he clearly underestimated the rapid technology advancement of the Internet. Compared with where online networks came in 30 years up to 1995 when 128k modems were top of the line and 28k and 56k modems were much more standard, it was hard to imagine high-speed networks becoming the norm. If the Internet were still at the speed limited by phone lines, Stoll's gloomy outcome on progress would be true.

I also think in some ways he is right. Amazon.com is certainly one of if not the most successful online companies. Yet in it's lifetime, Amazon.com has not turned a profit. It has made money on a quarterly and annual basis, but in terms of total dollars spent versus total revenue it is still a net-loss. For many companies, internet operations are much less profitable than brick and mortar operations. By and large, companies have put much more money into the Internet and computer systems than they have earned back.

But none of these things were the real root of Stoll's argument.He wasn't by any means anti-technology. He just felt that for all the sense of "connection" that the Internet seemed to provide, it really didn't provide that. I think that's largely true. Can any of us truly argue that online relationship are more meaningful than in person relationships? How much time do we spend email people when a 30-second phone call would work better? How many misunderstandings do we get online because people don't catch emotional clues?

Stoll's premise was that the Internet promised a lot of thinks that it couldn't deliver on. He missed on some points but I think he was dead right on others.

[Cringer]

The internet failed in the same place TV failed. Smell-O-Vision.

All I ever wanted was to smell you guys.

[MikeVic]

The internet failed in the same place TV failed. Smell-O-Vision.

All I ever wanted was to smell you guys.

Right back at ya buddy.

[Buccaneer]

I was trying to remember where I knew Clifford Stoll from, then I remembered reading the Cuckoo's Nest. I also sort of met him when I visited my best friend at the Harvard Smithsonian Lab (or something like that). My friend and I walked past his office and he was there tinkering on something. Never did talked to him.

I was online in 1978 when the Cal State University system had a CyberVax terminal network connecting all of the campsus. What few terminals that were had for public use had a Talk system - instant messaging. When I was online in the early 90s, BBS's were all the rage, along with the long-running Usenet (which I never used), and clearly predicted the rise of forums, chats and social networking.

[Apathetic Lurker]

He's right... This internet thing will never take off!

[sabotai]

When I was online in the early 90s, BBS's were all the rage, along with the long-running Usenet (which I never used)

the good old days (for me)....

[sterlingice]

For the most part, the conclusions were right but some of the reasoning was wrong. It's not the perfect medium everyone wanted but it's good for some things. The cyber business part was dead wrong as it is quite popular- but like Arles said, some things you just have to see before you buy. The part about education made me chuckle and was right- internet lessons are either designed by people who know the medium and can't teach or can and don't know the medium, like a shinier film strip ("I'm just a bill..."). And the first section about a wasteland of unfiltered data is fairly spot on.

SI

[Groundhog]

What he expects from the internet is not even close to what I expect from it. It more than serves its purpose, and I don't really need it to do much more than it does right now.