8 ms·

Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana (1995)

130 points by apsec112 6y ago

the_hoser 6y ago
Well... he was half-right, anyway.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  His mistake was in criticizing reading books online, shopping, libraries, and classrooms as if they would forever use the technology of 1995. He did not have the vision to understand that technology would progress ... for example, beyond the lame experience of reading a book on a giant CRT monitor into a magical experience where I can read any book ever published, instantly, and in the dark next to my wife while she sleeps.
  - barry27 6y ago
    There's nothing magical about that.
shureluck 6y ago
This gives me a pained nostalgia for a world where people liked to “hang out” at the mall when bored.
- brownbat 6y ago
  Futurism from forty years ago on the unbeatable triumph of malls: https://youtu.be/2RkxhXQnVSw https://youtu.be/2RkxhXQnVSw "This is how we live now."
  - brabel 6y ago
    Interesting how in the middle of the 80's they were still talking about malls as something novel :) Malls made town centers decay, sometimes even disappear. Towns definitely lost their uniqueness as pretty much every mall is the same. I love the internet and how it allows anyone to do almost anything without leaving home... but at the same time, I hope that spaces where people go to physically interact do not ever disappear (at least while we're confined to a physical, biological body, that is).
- ClikeX 6y ago
  I only know the malls from movies. And I never got why people would hang out there all day.
erehweb 6y ago
Previously discussed in 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6835403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6835403 and 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585520
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Edit: until just now, this was a comment where I mixed up 2016 and 2018 in a way that made me look like a complete idiot. That being too close to reality for comfort, I have removed it like some coward who doesn't enjoy being obviously wrong.
  - sseagull 6y ago
    I know it doesn’t seem like it, but Trump was elected in 2016, and took office in 2017. He was president when that comment was written.
    - libraryatnight 6y ago
      Seems like much much longer
      - sseagull 6y ago
        2020 feels like it has already lasted several years, so I can understand 2018 feeling like more than just 2 years ago :)
  - dhbanes 6y ago
    A lot of us still think GWB was a uniquely bad president.
sixhobbits 6y ago
Is there some kind of curated newsletter that sends out articles that are 20+ years old when predictions that they made are relevant? I'd love to read stuff like this regularly.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
This shows how hard it is to be right about the future: 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. Most of those came true. 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." https://imgur.com/0T2fBEv https://imgur.com/0T2fBEv And yet.. the substance of it is so true. When everyone has a voice, it's hard to know what to listen to. Merit tends to rise, but so does misinformation. The weirdest part is, misinformation != lying. Most people spreading misinformation genuinely believe it. Stripe's founder mentioned that the internet is probably going to trend back toward "dinner party" type apps rather than "town square" type apps: lacking editors, people you know tend to be a reliable source of information. It's also possible to express yourself without fearing criticism. I wonder what the next 30 years will be like.
- golergka 6y ago
  > Stripe's founder mentioned that the internet is probably going to trend back toward "dinner party" type apps rather than "town square" type apps Isn't that already happening in the last five years, with more and more people abandoning "public" social networks and spending much more time in private friend chat groups?
- chrisco255 6y ago
  It's interesting that he wrote this as a user of the internet for 2 decades in 1995. So between 1975 and 1995, the pace of change was just not that great. Then between say, 1995 and 2015, a lot changed indeed. Faster connections, ubiquitous wireless internet, e-readers, fast laptops, smart phones, e-commerce explosion, video portals and streaming, social media, etc. It feels to me the pace of change has slowed though. Maybe that's the way innovation goes. Sometimes in big bursts but mostly incremental. I agree that small group conversations are probably the next wave of social media, because you need that circle of trust to be fully expressive. If I had to guess, I would say we will perfect VR over the next couple decades and that we will replicate some of the brick and mortar experiences that way, but it will still not ever quite replace in person interaction. There's always going to be that uncanny valley between the cyber world and the real world.
handedness 6y ago
Cliff Stoll is a gem.
cowmix 6y ago
When I had my ISP in 1993, I gave every new customer a copy of Stoll's first book. Great book then, great book now.
bmmayer1 6y ago
"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." 25 years ago. Wow.
deanCommie 6y ago
It's easy to dunk on Cliff Stoll for this, but a lot of the stuff that he was wrong about didn't really get PROPERLY solved until almost 20 years later! The World Wide Web as we think of it today (browsers accessing websites over HTTP) was still nascent. SSL was only just announced 1 year earlier. The first Kindle wouldn't show up until 12 years after. And until the COVID pandemic most of the world still would have thought we weren't ready to effectively telecommunicate for work full time. (Arguably a lot of us still think that it's not sustainable long-term) Meanwhile, the late 90's were full of big dreams and exceedingly high expectations about what the Internet could be capable of, and the gap between expectations and reality is what contributed to the .com crash of the early 2000's Meanwhile, meanwhile, on a key subject which is the nature of TRUST of information on the Internet, we've come full circle as the last 4 years have shown that more access to better information does not guarantee a better informed populace if powerful forces with an interest in manipulating others have access to powerful platforms like Facebook where they can target their misinformation to the most radicalizable group. I would bet most people on this forum would not be able to predict accurately the next 25 years of technological progress, and if we tried, most of us would look as ridiculous as Cliff Stoll. His mistake was saying everything with as much certainty as he did.
julienreszka 6y ago
Skeptics always loose it's just a matter of time.
alpineidyll3 6y ago
I mean at least the title is accurate? Several of his inaccurate predictions elicit deep wistfulness. He shoulda been right.
bickeringyokel 6y ago
Reading an article from 1995 with its original typos and all. Its funny reading someone criticising the lack of proper editing when there are a couple obvious misspellings by the author.
syspec 6y ago
Mark my words, in 6 months, I too, will repost this classic article and get those sweet sweet HN points. As a bonus I will also post: "No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame" article
jfrunyon 6y ago
> Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. Oops. > 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. Also oops.
- tuukkah 6y ago
  >> These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. > Also oops. As far as I know, the use of computers in the classroom is still an unsolved problem let alone all teachers knowing how to do it. >> Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software. And thus there is no problem in closing schools for months because of COVID-19? Watching recorded lectures and filling in multiple-choice forms does not cut it.
  - indymike 6y ago
    There is a hockey substitution going on in education (in the Us) this year where many teachers are leaving. The change is being driven by two factors: fear of getting coronavirus and discomfort with teaching via internet. My wife changed jobs and got a raise as a result.
BerislavLopac 6y ago
Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
gjvc 6y ago
"What is incredible and unthinkable today is pedestrian tomorrow."

130 points by apsec112 6y ago

the_hoser 6y ago

Well... he was half-right, anyway.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
His mistake was in criticizing reading books online, shopping, libraries, and classrooms as if they would forever use the technology of 1995. He did not have the vision to understand that technology would progress ... for example, beyond the lame experience of reading a book on a giant CRT monitor into a magical experience where I can read any book ever published, instantly, and in the dark next to my wife while she sleeps.
- barry27 6y ago
  There's nothing magical about that.

shureluck 6y ago

This gives me a pained nostalgia for a world where people liked to “hang out” at the mall when bored.

brownbat 6y ago
Futurism from forty years ago on the unbeatable triumph of malls: https://youtu.be/2RkxhXQnVSw https://youtu.be/2RkxhXQnVSw "This is how we live now."
- brabel 6y ago
  Interesting how in the middle of the 80's they were still talking about malls as something novel :) Malls made town centers decay, sometimes even disappear. Towns definitely lost their uniqueness as pretty much every mall is the same. I love the internet and how it allows anyone to do almost anything without leaving home... but at the same time, I hope that spaces where people go to physically interact do not ever disappear (at least while we're confined to a physical, biological body, that is).
ClikeX 6y ago
I only know the malls from movies. And I never got why people would hang out there all day.

erehweb 6y ago

Previously discussed in 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6835403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6835403 and 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17585520

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Edit: until just now, this was a comment where I mixed up 2016 and 2018 in a way that made me look like a complete idiot. That being too close to reality for comfort, I have removed it like some coward who doesn't enjoy being obviously wrong.
- sseagull 6y ago
  I know it doesn’t seem like it, but Trump was elected in 2016, and took office in 2017. He was president when that comment was written.
  - libraryatnight 6y ago
    Seems like much much longer
    - sseagull 6y ago
      2020 feels like it has already lasted several years, so I can understand 2018 feeling like more than just 2 years ago :)
- dhbanes 6y ago
  A lot of us still think GWB was a uniquely bad president.

sixhobbits 6y ago

Is there some kind of curated newsletter that sends out articles that are 20+ years old when predictions that they made are relevant? I'd love to read stuff like this regularly.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

This shows how hard it is to be right about the future: 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. Most of those came true. 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." https://imgur.com/0T2fBEv https://imgur.com/0T2fBEv And yet.. the substance of it is so true. When everyone has a voice, it's hard to know what to listen to. Merit tends to rise, but so does misinformation. The weirdest part is, misinformation != lying. Most people spreading misinformation genuinely believe it. Stripe's founder mentioned that the internet is probably going to trend back toward "dinner party" type apps rather than "town square" type apps: lacking editors, people you know tend to be a reliable source of information. It's also possible to express yourself without fearing criticism. I wonder what the next 30 years will be like.

golergka 6y ago
> Stripe's founder mentioned that the internet is probably going to trend back toward "dinner party" type apps rather than "town square" type apps Isn't that already happening in the last five years, with more and more people abandoning "public" social networks and spending much more time in private friend chat groups?
chrisco255 6y ago
It's interesting that he wrote this as a user of the internet for 2 decades in 1995. So between 1975 and 1995, the pace of change was just not that great. Then between say, 1995 and 2015, a lot changed indeed. Faster connections, ubiquitous wireless internet, e-readers, fast laptops, smart phones, e-commerce explosion, video portals and streaming, social media, etc. It feels to me the pace of change has slowed though. Maybe that's the way innovation goes. Sometimes in big bursts but mostly incremental. I agree that small group conversations are probably the next wave of social media, because you need that circle of trust to be fully expressive. If I had to guess, I would say we will perfect VR over the next couple decades and that we will replicate some of the brick and mortar experiences that way, but it will still not ever quite replace in person interaction. There's always going to be that uncanny valley between the cyber world and the real world.

handedness 6y ago

Cliff Stoll is a gem.

cowmix 6y ago

When I had my ISP in 1993, I gave every new customer a copy of Stoll's first book. Great book then, great book now.

bmmayer1 6y ago

"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." 25 years ago. Wow.

deanCommie 6y ago

It's easy to dunk on Cliff Stoll for this, but a lot of the stuff that he was wrong about didn't really get PROPERLY solved until almost 20 years later! The World Wide Web as we think of it today (browsers accessing websites over HTTP) was still nascent. SSL was only just announced 1 year earlier. The first Kindle wouldn't show up until 12 years after. And until the COVID pandemic most of the world still would have thought we weren't ready to effectively telecommunicate for work full time. (Arguably a lot of us still think that it's not sustainable long-term) Meanwhile, the late 90's were full of big dreams and exceedingly high expectations about what the Internet could be capable of, and the gap between expectations and reality is what contributed to the .com crash of the early 2000's Meanwhile, meanwhile, on a key subject which is the nature of TRUST of information on the Internet, we've come full circle as the last 4 years have shown that more access to better information does not guarantee a better informed populace if powerful forces with an interest in manipulating others have access to powerful platforms like Facebook where they can target their misinformation to the most radicalizable group. I would bet most people on this forum would not be able to predict accurately the next 25 years of technological progress, and if we tried, most of us would look as ridiculous as Cliff Stoll. His mistake was saying everything with as much certainty as he did.

julienreszka 6y ago

Skeptics always loose it's just a matter of time.

alpineidyll3 6y ago

I mean at least the title is accurate? Several of his inaccurate predictions elicit deep wistfulness. He shoulda been right.

bickeringyokel 6y ago

Reading an article from 1995 with its original typos and all. Its funny reading someone criticising the lack of proper editing when there are a couple obvious misspellings by the author.

syspec 6y ago

Mark my words, in 6 months, I too, will repost this classic article and get those sweet sweet HN points. As a bonus I will also post: "No wireless, less space than a nomad. Lame" article

jfrunyon 6y ago

> Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. Oops. > 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. Also oops.

tuukkah 6y ago
>> These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. > Also oops. As far as I know, the use of computers in the classroom is still an unsolved problem let alone all teachers knowing how to do it. >> Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software. And thus there is no problem in closing schools for months because of COVID-19? Watching recorded lectures and filling in multiple-choice forms does not cut it.
- indymike 6y ago
  There is a hockey substitution going on in education (in the Us) this year where many teachers are leaving. The change is being driven by two factors: fear of getting coronavirus and discomfort with teaching via internet. My wife changed jobs and got a raise as a result.

BerislavLopac 6y ago

Clarke's first law: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws

gjvc 6y ago

"What is incredible and unthinkable today is pedestrian tomorrow."