6 ms·

Reminds me of this famously wrong column dismissing the Internet back in 1995: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://ww

Reminds me of this famously wrong column dismissing the Internet back in 1995: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirv... > 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. Takeaway: people expect way too much out of next five years of the future, and typically it takes twenty years for those expectations to become fully realized. (I believe there is an Andy Grove quote to the same effect, but I couldn't find it in time.)

blakesterz 8y ago
He wrote a great book "Silicon Snake Oil" that is full of things just like this he was so very wrong about, it's a great read still. He complains about how bad things were in the late 90s, but somehow misses how things will get better. It's really worth reading. Somewhere there's a great review, written somewhat recently, on all the things he had wrong. I can't seem to find the one I'm thinking of. I guess he was correct about how things on the web are never permanent.
- anoncoward111 8y ago
  Well, much like in buying options, you have to guess both the outcome of a bet and the time at which it happens. The author right, in 2003, I doubt you saw many people reading books on the beach with a clunky laptop or whatever version of kindle existed back then. So, from the mid 90s to mid 2000s, the author was decidedly right for 10 whole years, which is a long time. Now, if he continued to say that not many people would read ebooks on the beach from 2008-2018, he would have been wrong about that bet. But I doubt he would have felt that way, because by 2008, it was much clearer where the internet was headed compared to in 1998
  - ghaff 8y ago
    And, on still the other hand, I daresay a lot of the books read on a beach are still in dead tree form. Not that I really sit around beaches reading much, but I'd probably take a paperback over a Kindle for a variety of reasons.
- jghn 8y ago
  I remember at the time he was always touted as a "futurist", but he didn't ever seem to get the "future" part of that word
Sharlin 8y ago
Several people have formulated the same idea. Bill Gates: > We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Roy Amara: > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Kurzweil has called it ”the intuitive linear view” vs ”the historical exponential view”: > Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this “historical exponential view” of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored).
Upvoter33 8y ago
However, there is a difference, and I think an important one. With the internet, every piece of needed technology was either in place or easily imagined; with driverless cars, I don't think anyone can claim that is true. While ML/deep learning have made impressive strides in the past years, it is still a big leap to say these same technologies are enough to drive a car in the wild. They may be, but it also may be many years until such a technology is realized.
- KKKKkkkk1 8y ago
  But ML and DNNs are not supposed to be driving cars. The big players (Waymo and Cruise) are using DNNs only for perception.
  - bobwaycott 8y ago
    Isn’t perception necessary for driving?
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      It is not sufficient.
      - bobwaycott 8y ago
        The comment to which I replied has been edited. Originally, it said ML & DNNs are neither necessary nor sufficient for driving, then proceeded to say they are only used for perception--hence my question that perception was necessary for driving (but obviously not sufficient).
paganel 8y ago
We still don’t have flying cars nor self-conscious robots, things that have been prophetized 100 to 50 years ago. Going back more in time we still don’t have a philosophical stone. The idea is that some technological prophecies are indeed wrong.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  The former were pure prophecies with no viable, known methods to achieve them at the time. Self driving cars are in active development, and look to be within spitting distance of full autonomy at least for most driving scenarios. It's possible that last % of situations will be super hard to solve, sure, but it's still a very different thing than someone just going, "oh man it'll be cool when".
- freehunter 8y ago
  >We still don’t have flying cars Why does no one consider a helicopter to be a "flying car"? What can a flying car do that a helicopter can't? The only difference I see is that a flying car would be cheaper and owned by more people, which a helicopter could easily be if people actually wanted a flying car. Helicopters are expensive because they're very niche devices. The fact that almost no one owns a helicopter proves that people don't actually want flying cars.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    Helicopters do not, in fact, do what people want flying cars to do. The fact that the masses are not using helicopters to go to the mall shows this, and by reflecting on what would happen if this were tried, you can figure out why helicopters are not flying cars.
    - freehunter 8y ago
      But that doesn't answer the question of "what do people want to do with flying cars that can't be done with a helicopter"... it only answers the question "are people using helicopters as flying cars". You're making an extremely false assumption that "because people aren't using helicopters, that means helicopters aren't flying cars, and we all know people want flying cars". Extremely faulty. Let's beg the question and assume people want to go to the mall with their flying car, that's their primary use case. They can't do this right now because there are no parking spaces at the mall for their helicopter. There are no parking spaces for their helicopter because no one is flying to the mall with their helicopter. If people did, the mall would build parking for them. This is shown by the fact that places where people regularly fly helicopters, there is dedicated helicopter parking. It's just as valid for me to say "the fact that helicopters exist but are uncommon proves people don't want flying cars" as it is for you to say "helicopters are not flying cars". I'll ask the question again: why do people not consider helicopters to be flying cars? They do exactly what people want a flying car to do: they take off and land vertically, they can fit in a reasonably sized parking space, they can easily maneuver in three dimensions, and they hold passengers and cargo. I argue that helicopters are flying cars, and they're proof that most people don't actually want flying cars.
api 8y ago
I think the quote is along the lines of people tending to overestimate progress in the next 5 years but underestimate it in the next 25. However they also get it wrong. It's hard to predict. Others in the thread have pointed out Asimov's stories that featured FTL warp drives and computers that fit in only one room. One thing I've noted from observing 20th century progress is that progress is much, much faster for things that are less capital intensive per iteration. It's one reason I've been predicting that solar power will eat the world. Nuclear power is capital intensive per iteration (per power plant or research reactor), so even if it's superior in some ways it has a longer iteration time and so it will lose the race. I think this neatly explains why space tech stagnated and computer tech zoomed way ahead. So today we still have chemical rockets and still get most of our electricity globally from burning coal and gas (100+ year old tech), but we have supercomputers in our pockets.
hyperbovine 8y ago
To be fair, I find the experience of reading a book or newspaper on <insert your favorite E-reader here> at the beach is still inferior to having the dead tree version.
- mechanicalpulse 8y ago
  > To be fair, I find the experience of reading a book or newspaper on <insert your favorite E-reader here> at the beach is still inferior to having the dead tree version. Oh, yes, sitting on a wet and windy beach trying to read a newspaper sounds superior to reading it on an e-reader in every conceivable way.
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    A book or magazine on the other hand.. I definitely prefer in paper.
ghaff 8y ago
To be fair, one of the main things Stoll was critiquing at the time was whatever the educational tech hype du jour was which he was more right than wrong about. And twenty years later there's still a huge amount to criticize about how little tech has transformed education, especially in K-12. ADDED: One thing Stoll did get quite wrong was missing the utility of mass amounts of often uncurated information. Though, in this regard, he has a lot of good company among science fiction authors who mostly envisioned centralized encyclopedias created by experts, not Wikipedia or the Web generally.

blakesterz 8y ago

He wrote a great book "Silicon Snake Oil" that is full of things just like this he was so very wrong about, it's a great read still. He complains about how bad things were in the late 90s, but somehow misses how things will get better. It's really worth reading. Somewhere there's a great review, written somewhat recently, on all the things he had wrong. I can't seem to find the one I'm thinking of. I guess he was correct about how things on the web are never permanent.

anoncoward111 8y ago
Well, much like in buying options, you have to guess both the outcome of a bet and the time at which it happens. The author right, in 2003, I doubt you saw many people reading books on the beach with a clunky laptop or whatever version of kindle existed back then. So, from the mid 90s to mid 2000s, the author was decidedly right for 10 whole years, which is a long time. Now, if he continued to say that not many people would read ebooks on the beach from 2008-2018, he would have been wrong about that bet. But I doubt he would have felt that way, because by 2008, it was much clearer where the internet was headed compared to in 1998
- ghaff 8y ago
  And, on still the other hand, I daresay a lot of the books read on a beach are still in dead tree form. Not that I really sit around beaches reading much, but I'd probably take a paperback over a Kindle for a variety of reasons.
jghn 8y ago
I remember at the time he was always touted as a "futurist", but he didn't ever seem to get the "future" part of that word

Sharlin 8y ago

Several people have formulated the same idea. Bill Gates: > We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Roy Amara: > We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. Kurzweil has called it ”the intuitive linear view” vs ”the historical exponential view”: > Most technology forecasts ignore altogether this “historical exponential view” of technological progress. That is why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details), but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because the exponential growth is ignored).

Upvoter33 8y ago

However, there is a difference, and I think an important one. With the internet, every piece of needed technology was either in place or easily imagined; with driverless cars, I don't think anyone can claim that is true. While ML/deep learning have made impressive strides in the past years, it is still a big leap to say these same technologies are enough to drive a car in the wild. They may be, but it also may be many years until such a technology is realized.

KKKKkkkk1 8y ago
But ML and DNNs are not supposed to be driving cars. The big players (Waymo and Cruise) are using DNNs only for perception.
- bobwaycott 8y ago
  Isn’t perception necessary for driving?
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    It is not sufficient.
    - bobwaycott 8y ago
      The comment to which I replied has been edited. Originally, it said ML & DNNs are neither necessary nor sufficient for driving, then proceeded to say they are only used for perception--hence my question that perception was necessary for driving (but obviously not sufficient).

paganel 8y ago

We still don’t have flying cars nor self-conscious robots, things that have been prophetized 100 to 50 years ago. Going back more in time we still don’t have a philosophical stone. The idea is that some technological prophecies are indeed wrong.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
The former were pure prophecies with no viable, known methods to achieve them at the time. Self driving cars are in active development, and look to be within spitting distance of full autonomy at least for most driving scenarios. It's possible that last % of situations will be super hard to solve, sure, but it's still a very different thing than someone just going, "oh man it'll be cool when".
freehunter 8y ago
>We still don’t have flying cars Why does no one consider a helicopter to be a "flying car"? What can a flying car do that a helicopter can't? The only difference I see is that a flying car would be cheaper and owned by more people, which a helicopter could easily be if people actually wanted a flying car. Helicopters are expensive because they're very niche devices. The fact that almost no one owns a helicopter proves that people don't actually want flying cars.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  Helicopters do not, in fact, do what people want flying cars to do. The fact that the masses are not using helicopters to go to the mall shows this, and by reflecting on what would happen if this were tried, you can figure out why helicopters are not flying cars.
  - freehunter 8y ago
    But that doesn't answer the question of "what do people want to do with flying cars that can't be done with a helicopter"... it only answers the question "are people using helicopters as flying cars". You're making an extremely false assumption that "because people aren't using helicopters, that means helicopters aren't flying cars, and we all know people want flying cars". Extremely faulty. Let's beg the question and assume people want to go to the mall with their flying car, that's their primary use case. They can't do this right now because there are no parking spaces at the mall for their helicopter. There are no parking spaces for their helicopter because no one is flying to the mall with their helicopter. If people did, the mall would build parking for them. This is shown by the fact that places where people regularly fly helicopters, there is dedicated helicopter parking. It's just as valid for me to say "the fact that helicopters exist but are uncommon proves people don't want flying cars" as it is for you to say "helicopters are not flying cars". I'll ask the question again: why do people not consider helicopters to be flying cars? They do exactly what people want a flying car to do: they take off and land vertically, they can fit in a reasonably sized parking space, they can easily maneuver in three dimensions, and they hold passengers and cargo. I argue that helicopters are flying cars, and they're proof that most people don't actually want flying cars.

api 8y ago

I think the quote is along the lines of people tending to overestimate progress in the next 5 years but underestimate it in the next 25. However they also get it wrong. It's hard to predict. Others in the thread have pointed out Asimov's stories that featured FTL warp drives and computers that fit in only one room. One thing I've noted from observing 20th century progress is that progress is much, much faster for things that are less capital intensive per iteration. It's one reason I've been predicting that solar power will eat the world. Nuclear power is capital intensive per iteration (per power plant or research reactor), so even if it's superior in some ways it has a longer iteration time and so it will lose the race. I think this neatly explains why space tech stagnated and computer tech zoomed way ahead. So today we still have chemical rockets and still get most of our electricity globally from burning coal and gas (100+ year old tech), but we have supercomputers in our pockets.

hyperbovine 8y ago

To be fair, I find the experience of reading a book or newspaper on <insert your favorite E-reader here> at the beach is still inferior to having the dead tree version.

mechanicalpulse 8y ago
> To be fair, I find the experience of reading a book or newspaper on <insert your favorite E-reader here> at the beach is still inferior to having the dead tree version. Oh, yes, sitting on a wet and windy beach trying to read a newspaper sounds superior to reading it on an e-reader in every conceivable way.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  A book or magazine on the other hand.. I definitely prefer in paper.

ghaff 8y ago

To be fair, one of the main things Stoll was critiquing at the time was whatever the educational tech hype du jour was which he was more right than wrong about. And twenty years later there's still a huge amount to criticize about how little tech has transformed education, especially in K-12. ADDED: One thing Stoll did get quite wrong was missing the utility of mass amounts of often uncurated information. Though, in this regard, he has a lot of good company among science fiction authors who mostly envisioned centralized encyclopedias created by experts, not Wikipedia or the Web generally.