In 1995, this astronomer predicted the Internet's greatest failure

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: July 22, 2017 at 9:07:24 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] In 1995, this astronomer predicted the Internet's greatest failure
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> In 1995, this astronomer predicted the Internet’s greatest failure
> And, of course, we trolled him for it for decades.
> By Rob Howard
> Jul 18 2017
> <https://medium.com/the-mission/in-1995-this-astronomer-predicted-the-internets-greatest-failure-68a1c3927e46>
>
> Twenty-two years ago, astronomer Clifford Stoll made a huge mistake.He challenged the popular notion that the 
> Internet was a force for good, and he was ruthlessly mocked by just about everyone.
>
> On the surface, you can see why his 1995 Newsweek column has been maligned for decades. Some of the problems he 
> presented — like the challenge of taking secure online payments in a world before PayPal, and irrelevant search 
> results before the days of Google — have been solved, or at the very least we’ve grown accustomed to their remaining 
> flaws. That made his article easy fodder for mockery by technology columnists every time an anniversary rolled around.
>
> The problem for the people who chose to troll Stoll, however, is that a lot of his predictions and criticisms of the 
> web were spot on. Read this quote from 1995, and tell me it couldn’t be written (and praised) today:
>
> “Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? 
> Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, 
> and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen.”
> This was written in reference to Usenet, an early Internet message board, but could apply to Twitter, Reddit, and 
> countless other social platforms today without changing a single character. A few months ago, Ev Williams, the 
> founder of Medium and co-founder of Twitter, said almost the exact same thing:
>
> “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to 
> be a better place. I was wrong about that.”
> In the same article, Williams told The New York Times: “The Internet is broken.” If only someone had seen this coming.
>
> As a scientist, Stoll had been using forms of the Internet since its inception in the ’70s. He wasn’t off-base in 
> calling it a “wasteland of unfiltered data.” He was 20 years ahead of his time.
>
> For all the progress and quality-of-life improvements we’ve seen with the rise of Internet-enabled technology, the 
> Achilles’ heel is that we’re now universally plagued by information overload. That’s made us more anxious, more 
> angry, more ideologically divided, and more confused about reality than ever before. Stoll dismisses the notion that 
> “the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic,” realizing that unfiltered, unlimited 
> information leads not to a more knowledgeable and thoughtful populace, but to a cultural addiction to non-stop 
> digital stimulation.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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