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Excerpts from “Silicon Snake Oil” by Dr. Clifford Stoll, Ph.D. Physics ———- I don’t believe that phone books, newspapers, magazines, or corner video stores wil
by dxbydt 4y ago
Excerpts from “Silicon Snake Oil” by Dr. Clifford Stoll, Ph.D. Physics
———-
I don’t believe that phone books, newspapers, magazines, or corner video stores will disappear as computer networks spread. Nor do I think that my telephone will merge with my computer, to become some sort of information appliance.”
“I suspect Big Brother won’t have an easy time tracing us. … Our privacy will be protected, as it always has been, by simple obscurity and the high cost of uncovering information about us.”
“What will the electronic book look like? Some sort of miniature laptop computer, I’d guess. We’ll download selections and page through them electronically. Try reading electronic books. They’re awful.”
“When high-bandwidth links allow every home to access animated, talking, holographic computerized encyclopedias, I can’t help thinking that kids still won’t use ’em.”
“Video-on-demand, that killer application of communications, will remain a dream.”
“It’s easy to make fancy home pages on the World Wide Web. But jumping from one document to another baffles me even more than watching someone channel surf. I’m never certain of my location in a twisty maze of cross-references.”
“Why not send a fax? It’s far more universal than e-mail — we not only find fax machines everywhere, but they can all speak to one another. … I find it easier [than e-mail] to just scribble a note on a plain piece of paper and send it over a fax. Or address an envelope, lick a stamp, and mail the letter
- coldtea 4y ago>When high-bandwidth links allow every home to access animated, talking, holographic computerized encyclopedias, I can’t help thinking that kids still won’t use ’em. He got that one 100%... Kids still wont touch educational content with a 10-ft pole, much less encyclopedias - unless (a) forced by parents, (b) they belong to the statistically small subset of nerds (I'm one, not meant offensively).
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoMeanwhile, Project Gutenberg existed since 1971. Reminds me of the cheesy William Gibson quote: The future is already here—It's just not very evenly distributed
- hotpotamus 4y agoCliff Stoll has to be the most lovable crank of the modern day. I actually feel like he was overall correct about the societal implications of technology while being amazingly wrong on almost every detail. And he's far from a fool - he famously developed quite a lot of network security/intrusion detection ability back in the 80's when it was first getting going.
- jhbadger 4y agoAnd some of his criticisms of the details were right but we just decided to accept the problems. For example, he thought e-commerce wouldn't take off because hackers would just steal the credit card info from e-retailers. They do, but people have just accepted that every few years they'll have their credit card info compromised and have to go through an ordeal of cancelling the card and getting a new one.