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Required reading for everyone.

"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?"

LOL...

Dugg for its comical value
Why the Linux Section though?

Someone needs to get the writer to revisit his conclusions...some to a small extent are still true but overall, you totally got it wrong mate.

I love the irony of the typo in this line:

"What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness."

All your learning are belong to The Internets.

It only there was a way to filter the data on the internet. Maybe some sort of wesite where stories and sites of interest are submitted and the users of the website vote on them. Nah, that would never fly.

Of course, this was also written before google existed. Remember searching with Lycos?

I remember going into a Hollywood Video about 10 years ago and I was chatting with the manager at the counter and I commented on how neat dvd's were. He told me "DVDs will never overtake the VCR." It's funny how much can change before you know it!

On the contrary, I learn most of my stuff from Wiki and CDs rather than teachers.

What the hell is the internet?

A lot more people might still be Bush supporters if they had to rely on only their local newspapers...

Maybe spellcheck wasn't invented back then.

"...you can't tote that laptop to the beach".

I might just be crazy, but I'm pretty sure the sales made on the internet worldwide in a month (or an hour for that matter) trounce his local mall's afternoon sales.

So funny. It's amazing that the author doesn't consider that the internet and other technology might...umm..improve? I also love the comment about the indispensable SALESPERSON!

The really depressing thing about this article is that the guy who wrote it, Cliff Stoll, is the author of "The Cuckoo's Egg". It's the true story of how he went from being an astronomer to a developer at his university, and then realized that hackers were using the university's computers to attempt to hack into various government agencies. It's a great book, especially if you're interested in how the pre-Internet multi-site networks worked.

Why is it so depressing? Here's a guy who is bright, funny, articulate, and a pretty decent writer who instead of seeing the potential of the Internet, dismisses it, when he first-hand saw how powerful even the networks before the Internet could be.

lol @ the irony that THIS is on the Internet.

"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."

I guess he never thought of devices like the Amazon Kindle.

Am I the only one who prefers cybersex?

"Too many connectios, try again later." LOL, I think checking your spelling was only invented in 1996 or so...

Well, I'd love to read the article, but unfortunately there just isn't any way for the Internet to duplicate a copy of Newsweek and make it available on my computer. I've been looking for that back issue for HOURS.

If only there were a website where people could point other people to unedited news that's interesting, all while using anonymous handles.

I bet he feels stupider than that time Peter locked his keys out of the car!

Clifford Stoll, you have been pwned.

It's almost as if he foresaw what the internet would become and wrote an article with a huge "/sarcasm" tag at the end...but without the tag...

Ahh, 1995. When the term "Information Super Highway" was still a viable. (if it ever was..)

News media trying to scare you away from the internets... pay no attention to the men behind the curtain

I like the cyberbusiness part:

"the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople."

Thats why I dont read Newsweek !

Author's homepage:
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stoll/

The media at it's best again!

"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."

Seriously, this guy was a piece of work. It's as if he couldn't imagine the internet...uhmmm.....IMPROVING or EVOLVING in any way. Yeah, because the internet isn't popular in 1995, it will NEVER be popular. I'd love to travel back in time and talk to this guy. I'd tell him that I do most of my shopping online. I'd tell him I don't buy CDs anymore, I just don't. I don't need to, not when Amazon sells DRM-free MP3s for $9 an album. I'd tell him that I bought my 47" HDTV online and it turned out great. I'd tell him I LOVED the fact that I didn't have pesky salespeople around to push add-ons like overpriced cables, surge protectors, and extended warranties.
I'd tell him about Paypal and Google Checkout, and that the chances of your credit card information getting stolen over the internet now are about the chances of it getting stolen in real life, if you're not stupid enough to give it to phishing sites.
This guy made the mistake of assuming the internet was never going to change from being a glorified bulletin board.

Aww, give him a break. Web search back then was really just a string search, and he's probably not making a distinction between html served pages and stuff from gopher and wais. Encrypted connections weren't commonly available, making things like Paypal and banking impossible, and the 640x480 monitor tube was NOT something you wanted to read your newspaper on. Laptops also weighed around 10lbs and there were no 802.11 connections. He's spot on, except he fails in not thinking ahead enough to realize that these problems were solvable.

He does have 1 good point-
I can't stand reading a book, especially a novel on my PC. I don't know, but I just really can't concentrate or enjoy(even non-fiction) when reading on a PC for a long period of time.

WTF, why would this guy downplay the internet?

"Clifford Stoll (or Cliff Stoll) is a U.S. astronomer, computer systems administrator, and author. He received his Ph.D. from University of Arizona in 1980. During the 1960s and '70s, Stoll was assistant chief engineer[1] at WBFO, a public radio station in Buffalo, New York."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Stoll

The real irony here is the fact that THE INTERNET is what allows us to know what a moron he was back in 1995.. otherwise no one would ever know.

I love reading articles about technology written in the 90's, they're always full of hilarious quotes.

Too bad he didn't talk about how the internet can never change the way that we watch porn. He would have been right about something. That whole internet porn thing never really took off.

I remember it was a pretty kickass christmas that year. We got a CD-ROM drive for our windows 3.1 machine, I think I also got a Gameboy.

The biggest problem here, other than some facts being completely off, is that the writer is making the assumption that just because something has not happened yet that it won't happen. People are becoming more and more dependent on computers for everything they do, and there are classes that are streamed online, and some universities are strictly online. If you look at children 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years ago, and now, you'll see that they are all impressively doing more and more with computers.

It should be noted that while this article seems obviously out of place now. Back in '95, I would have agreed, with that author *but in my heart wish for more*.
In 1995, my rural county didn't even have local internet access. The school board offered it to staff and teachers, and a new company called AOL, had set up access in the neighboring county. *meaning long distance to connect online* Many of us at that time still used local bbs'. It wasn't until almost a full year later, that the local newspaper had the vision to sell off their bandwidth to the public.
The internet sucked in 1995. There was usenet, and irc, and thats about it. I could get access to the same type of services *minus html* through the local bbs' and still talk to people who were local to where I was. It was all baby steps.
The internet has come a long was from web 0.2 to web 2.0.

The last public resource to go private -- thank the Chinese government

He probably wrote that article on stone with hammer and chisel in hand. "Gutenberg? The guy's a nutjob."

This guy wrote a really good book back in the early 90s when he caught a German hacking group snooping around his university's network. It's called "The Cuckoo's Egg" and worth checking out. Sure he's grumpy about technology's future, but he's no idiot.

predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.
Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.Uh, sure.
LOL. I love smugness for the sake of smugness.