There's nothing like a little trip down memory lane every once in a while. And when I recently stumbled upon this 1995 Newsweek article that called the Internet a fad, I couldn't tear myself away from it. To be honest, my first though was, "Man, this guy must feel stupid for writing this." But after thinking about it for a while, I realized that the author had a 50/50 chance of being right. Things could've gone the other way -- a few smart people could've decided to focus their energies elsewhere, and this Internet thing would have never become what it is today...
Below are a few excerpts -- but I encourage you to read the whole article, it really makes you think twice before speaking in absolutes...
After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. 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. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
To the author's credit -- stores have not become obsolete...
No comments:
Post a Comment