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Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky., Beth Wilberding column: Fifteen years later, Internet more than just a fad
Mar 07, 2010 (Messenger-Inquirer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
I ordered a couple of books from a Web site just last week. While perusing a message board, I learned about BetterWorldBooks.com., which sells new and used books.
Money raised from the purchases goes to various literacy funds. It has raised more than $7.6 million for global literacy, according to the Web site.
So, in the next few days, I'll receive my used copies of the first two novels in the "Harry Potter" series.
Now, this might not seem like that big of a deal. People shop online each day, ordering birthday presents or other items that can't be found in some stores.
I was in fourth or fifth grade when my family got its first computer, complete with Internet access, so I have trouble remembering a time when the Internet wasn't available.
But Clifford Stoll, an author and astronomist, didn't think the Internet would last.
In a 1995 Newsweek essay called "The Internet? Bah!," Stoll wrote: "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."
He sounded a bit like the Ebenezer Scrooge of the Internet. Stoll even doubted that people would buy books or newspapers from the Internet.
The essay has resurfaced on the Internet itself. I first saw a link to it on Facebook. Earlier last week, Nick Summers, a senior reporter at Newsweek, blogged about the piece.
He cited a blog post by Mark Coatney, who operates Newsweek's Twitter and Tumblr feeds, who wrote that, in 1995, the Internet wasn't great.
"But the fatal flaw in (Stoll's) argument was his assumption that it was never going to get any better," Coatney wrote.
Summers also, as he points out, used the Internet to see what Stoll had to say 15 years later about the essay. In a comment on Boing Boing from late February, Stoll wrote: "Of my many mistakes, flubs and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler. Wrong? Yep. At the time, I was trying to speak against the tide of futuristic commentary on how The Internet Will Solve Our Problems. ... And, as I've laughed at others' foibles, I think back to some of my own cringeworthy contributions.
"Now, whenever I think I know what's happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff ..."
Though Stoll couldn't possibly know quite where technology was going to take us, it is interesting to look at his perspective from the early days of the Internet.
I think the biggest lesson from "The Internet? Bah!" is that it's hard to predict where technology is going to take us.
We were wrong about flying cars and moving sidewalks by the year 2000.
In 2025, it will be interesting to look back and see what we were wrong about in 2010.
Beth Wilberding, 691-7307, bwilberding@messenger-inquirer.com
On The Web
To read Nick Summers blog, which includes a link to Clifford Stoll's essay, visit http://bit.ly/b3GoQO.
To see more of the Messenger-Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.messenger-inquirer.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Messenger-Inquirer,
Owensboro, Ky. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For
reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or
847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group
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