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This shows how hard it is to be right about the future: Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. The

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.
- kanox 6y ago
  The "web" generally refers to http/html which were extremely new in 1995, much newer than generic tcp/ip networking. The first netscape navigator was released in 1994!
  - airstrike 6y ago
    Yup. "The web" = www.*
    - Ajedi32 6y ago
      Or rather, http:// http://
  - Threeve303 6y ago
    It was an interesting time with Windows 95 being shipped without IE or a TCP/IP stack by default. This lead to needing to install stuff like Trumpet Winsock. This mirrored the local networking capabilities between Windows 3.x and 3.11 Windows for workgroups. Eventually, Microsoft would realize the need to include all of this by default in Windows, which led to the antitrust suit.
- mlyle 6y ago
  It's worth noting that this was a contrarian view in 1995, and that most of us saw things going the other way.
  - tkgally 6y ago
    I agree. I remember hearing Clifford Stoll interviewed on the radio around 1995 and reading reviews of his book "Silicon Snake Oil," which was published the same year, and thinking that he was obviously wrong. It was just such a game-changer for me to be able to sit in my home in Tokyo, and, through a dial-up modem, get information I needed from throughout the world—information that otherwise would have required a trip to a major library or bookstore, if it was even available there. And to be able to find people interested in chatting about topics that no one else in Japan would have cared about. The Internet was clearly the future.
ben_w 6y ago
> It's also possible to express yourself without fearing criticism. I wonder what the next 30 years will be like. I hope that change is coming. Hope aside… I expect that, to riff on the quote, in the future, everyone will be globally infamous for 15 minutes.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  “Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it” https://mobile.twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217 https://mobile.twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410...
- grawprog 6y ago
  Without criticism how can there be improvement? Criticism isn't a bad thing. Criticism leads to self reflection which leads to self improvement. At least it should. Personally, I'd rather listen to 1 person criticize me than 10 people who praise me. That 1 critical person's going to have the most valuable thing to say that leads to improvement. To an extent, note I'm talking about reasonable criticism, not assholes.
  - idrios 6y ago
    I agree with you, except that I like criticism when it challenges my thoughts and gets me to improve. On the internet you're at risk of losing your job over things you said 10 years ago, or getting death threats from random strangers. Criticism is great when it's well thought out and well intended. When it's an opinion someone formed seconds ago based on an image or a news headline or an image of a news headline, there's probably nuance that they're missing and their angry response just makes things worse
mojuba 6y ago
> This shows how hard it is to be right about the future Back in 1995 I remember I was very skeptical about what was then called radio modems. I thought that radio wasn't reliable and that Ethernet cables were there to stay forever. I didn't see laptops (let alone smartphones much later) becoming a thing. Though funny thing is, today in 2020, my laptop is connected via Ethernet at home. WiFi interference and congestion can at times become unbearable in a typical residential apartment block. You don't even know who or what creates interference so I was kind of right back then, but also terribly wrong in the long run. I missed the practical aspect of radio communication within a short range, and I missed the trend that computing devices will get smaller and more portable over time. We thought at the time that computers will get more powerful but the size factor and the "desktopness" won't change. The lesson for me is: don't try to predict the future of technologies. You can't just take a trend and extrapolate into the future: trends make unexpected turns and jumps all the time. This seems to be the only thing that's reliably predictable: that sudden turns and breakthroughs happen all the time and that each turn and breakthrough discovers some new practical aspect of a technology that was impossible to see in advance.
- k__ 6y ago
  "WiFi interference and congestion can at times become unbearable in a typical residential apartment block" Could this be solved with the right wallpaper or paint materials?
benchen70 6y ago
Can I ask, since I am curious, why misinformation != lying? To me, I have always found that the statement "truths are the best lies" is very correct. To me, you can tell a little bit of truth, and leave a large amount of true information unsaid. However, that does not mean that the whole encompassing "truth" - whatever you end up expressing in the listener's mind as a whole - is true. This is not about whether they believe, but how they perceive. Whether the listener believes is another story.
k__ 6y ago
I fondly remember talking to some class mates in 2002. We were in an IT school and I told them that I wanted to become a software developer. They laughed at me and said they want to become admins, because basically everything has already be developed. They had edonkey for music and films, they had video games, they had IRC for chat, what else was there?
II2II 6y ago
> When everyone has a voice, it's hard to know what to listen to. ... The weirdest part is, misinformation != lying. Most people spreading misinformation genuinely believe it. Mostly agreed. There also many times when people should look at what they just wrote and say, "maybe I don't know enough about the topic to publish about it." To choose a non-controversial topic: I have recently found the time to explore programming for microcontrollers. So much of the information that I come across is a simple rehash, to the point where it is clear that people are writing about their own experiences as soon as they learn about it. There is no depth of knowledge, which is problematic when the accuracy of information depends upon the details. The problem of figuring out who to listen too usually comes down to figuring out who to filter out. In some cases it may be easy to do because the tone or content indicates the scope and accuracy of their knowledge. Unfortunately, it is a time consuming process since you have to hear what they are saying before you can decide whether they are worth listening to.
dorkwood 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 I've always been more inclined towards dinner party type experiences, but no one in my social circle has agreed. They all prefer the town square. One of my best app experiences to date was with Snapchat, when it first became popular. Several of my friends started using it, and it became a way to share funny or interesting things we saw in our day to day. If I saw something that I thought Dave and Jess would find interesting, I'd just send it to those two. Because it was so ephemeral, it was great for small things -- the sort of things it wouldn't be worth creating a group chat for. It was the equivalent of walking down the street with a small group of friends, pointing at something you noticed, and saying "check that out". Eventually, both Instagram and Snapchat started pushing the story format, and seemingly overnight the experience turned from a dinner party into a town square. No one was sharing with small groups of friends anymore. When you add to your story, it's for everyone to see. I never understood why my friends saw that as a replacement for what we had before. I think perhaps, for most people, the desire to be heard and noticed by a crowd outweighs any benefits that sharing with a smaller group might bring.

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.

kanox 6y ago
The "web" generally refers to http/html which were extremely new in 1995, much newer than generic tcp/ip networking. The first netscape navigator was released in 1994!
- airstrike 6y ago
  Yup. "The web" = www.*
  - Ajedi32 6y ago
    Or rather, http:// http://
- Threeve303 6y ago
  It was an interesting time with Windows 95 being shipped without IE or a TCP/IP stack by default. This lead to needing to install stuff like Trumpet Winsock. This mirrored the local networking capabilities between Windows 3.x and 3.11 Windows for workgroups. Eventually, Microsoft would realize the need to include all of this by default in Windows, which led to the antitrust suit.
mlyle 6y ago
It's worth noting that this was a contrarian view in 1995, and that most of us saw things going the other way.
- tkgally 6y ago
  I agree. I remember hearing Clifford Stoll interviewed on the radio around 1995 and reading reviews of his book "Silicon Snake Oil," which was published the same year, and thinking that he was obviously wrong. It was just such a game-changer for me to be able to sit in my home in Tokyo, and, through a dial-up modem, get information I needed from throughout the world—information that otherwise would have required a trip to a major library or bookstore, if it was even available there. And to be able to find people interested in chatting about topics that no one else in Japan would have cared about. The Internet was clearly the future.

ben_w 6y ago

> It's also possible to express yourself without fearing criticism. I wonder what the next 30 years will be like. I hope that change is coming. Hope aside… I expect that, to riff on the quote, in the future, everyone will be globally infamous for 15 minutes.

Robotbeat 6y ago
“Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it” https://mobile.twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410889217 https://mobile.twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1080665226410...
grawprog 6y ago
Without criticism how can there be improvement? Criticism isn't a bad thing. Criticism leads to self reflection which leads to self improvement. At least it should. Personally, I'd rather listen to 1 person criticize me than 10 people who praise me. That 1 critical person's going to have the most valuable thing to say that leads to improvement. To an extent, note I'm talking about reasonable criticism, not assholes.
- idrios 6y ago
  I agree with you, except that I like criticism when it challenges my thoughts and gets me to improve. On the internet you're at risk of losing your job over things you said 10 years ago, or getting death threats from random strangers. Criticism is great when it's well thought out and well intended. When it's an opinion someone formed seconds ago based on an image or a news headline or an image of a news headline, there's probably nuance that they're missing and their angry response just makes things worse

mojuba 6y ago

> This shows how hard it is to be right about the future Back in 1995 I remember I was very skeptical about what was then called radio modems. I thought that radio wasn't reliable and that Ethernet cables were there to stay forever. I didn't see laptops (let alone smartphones much later) becoming a thing. Though funny thing is, today in 2020, my laptop is connected via Ethernet at home. WiFi interference and congestion can at times become unbearable in a typical residential apartment block. You don't even know who or what creates interference so I was kind of right back then, but also terribly wrong in the long run. I missed the practical aspect of radio communication within a short range, and I missed the trend that computing devices will get smaller and more portable over time. We thought at the time that computers will get more powerful but the size factor and the "desktopness" won't change. The lesson for me is: don't try to predict the future of technologies. You can't just take a trend and extrapolate into the future: trends make unexpected turns and jumps all the time. This seems to be the only thing that's reliably predictable: that sudden turns and breakthroughs happen all the time and that each turn and breakthrough discovers some new practical aspect of a technology that was impossible to see in advance.

k__ 6y ago
"WiFi interference and congestion can at times become unbearable in a typical residential apartment block" Could this be solved with the right wallpaper or paint materials?

benchen70 6y ago

Can I ask, since I am curious, why misinformation != lying? To me, I have always found that the statement "truths are the best lies" is very correct. To me, you can tell a little bit of truth, and leave a large amount of true information unsaid. However, that does not mean that the whole encompassing "truth" - whatever you end up expressing in the listener's mind as a whole - is true. This is not about whether they believe, but how they perceive. Whether the listener believes is another story.

k__ 6y ago

I fondly remember talking to some class mates in 2002. We were in an IT school and I told them that I wanted to become a software developer. They laughed at me and said they want to become admins, because basically everything has already be developed. They had edonkey for music and films, they had video games, they had IRC for chat, what else was there?

II2II 6y ago

> When everyone has a voice, it's hard to know what to listen to. ... The weirdest part is, misinformation != lying. Most people spreading misinformation genuinely believe it. Mostly agreed. There also many times when people should look at what they just wrote and say, "maybe I don't know enough about the topic to publish about it." To choose a non-controversial topic: I have recently found the time to explore programming for microcontrollers. So much of the information that I come across is a simple rehash, to the point where it is clear that people are writing about their own experiences as soon as they learn about it. There is no depth of knowledge, which is problematic when the accuracy of information depends upon the details. The problem of figuring out who to listen too usually comes down to figuring out who to filter out. In some cases it may be easy to do because the tone or content indicates the scope and accuracy of their knowledge. Unfortunately, it is a time consuming process since you have to hear what they are saying before you can decide whether they are worth listening to.

dorkwood 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 I've always been more inclined towards dinner party type experiences, but no one in my social circle has agreed. They all prefer the town square. One of my best app experiences to date was with Snapchat, when it first became popular. Several of my friends started using it, and it became a way to share funny or interesting things we saw in our day to day. If I saw something that I thought Dave and Jess would find interesting, I'd just send it to those two. Because it was so ephemeral, it was great for small things -- the sort of things it wouldn't be worth creating a group chat for. It was the equivalent of walking down the street with a small group of friends, pointing at something you noticed, and saying "check that out". Eventually, both Instagram and Snapchat started pushing the story format, and seemingly overnight the experience turned from a dinner party into a town square. No one was sharing with small groups of friends anymore. When you add to your story, it's for everyone to see. I never understood why my friends saw that as a replacement for what we had before. I think perhaps, for most people, the desire to be heard and noticed by a crowd outweighs any benefits that sharing with a smaller group might bring.