Unpredictable Nature of Technology
Recently, lots of sites started pointing out a very old article that was published in Newsweek in 1995. Titled “ The Internet? Bah! ”, the author, Clifford Stoll, explained why he felt the Internet would never live up to its hype. So how accurate were his predictions? Stoll felt that the global bulletin boards that the Internet promised where anyone could post their views “leapfrogging editors and publishers” would only result in cacophony. His point was that if everyone was busy voicing (shouting?) their opinion, who was doing the listening? What did happen was that people started posting comments and responses to published articles. And even their opinions via blog sites. And people posted comments below those as well. If that isn’t reading and listening, what is? He also predicted that “no online database will replace your daily newspaper”. Now that one he got totally wrong. People just decided to read the information for free online rather than pay for the printed e