Posted on 11/08/2010 11:56:19 AM PST by My Favorite Headache
Flashback from 1995: Newsweek on Why No One Will Buy Things on the Internet
Clifford Stoll internet Newsweek
by Robert Quigley | 2:14 pm, November 8th, 2010
If this Newsweek essay written in 1995 by Clifford Stoll was to be believed, we’d be in a somewhat different place today.
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 obselete. 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.
Flash forward to the present day; many large retail stores have been gutted of their staffs as a cost-saving measure, in part due to online competition.
Even more amusing is Stoll’s frustration with search; Stoll makes a whopper of a logical error when he assumes that the state of search technology with which he’s familiar is a fundamental property of the Internet, but he provides a handy snapshot of just how bad it was in 1995.
What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. 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.”
The article currently has about 3,000 Facebook recommendations on Newsweek.com, by the way.
“What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.”
Bwaaa ha haa. The American public has opened their eyes to the “ivory tower” editors of the Mass Media who insisted that they knew better than everyone else.
Newsweak’s periodical has no customers who don’t have a waiting room or library budget to pay for the subscription.
Well, you know, things only worth a dollar tend to be on the cheap side...
I never could find a decent image of the Virgin Mary or Michael Jackson on a piece of toast at the local mall.
Although, in fairness to Clifford, it wasn't until 1995 that a big part of the backbone passed over to MCI and allowed commercial traffic (if recollection serves) so he really didn't get a chance to see capitalism work on the internet.
I found it on the first try, imaging that! http://www.britishbattles.com/waterloo/battle-trafalgar.htm He must have consulted with fat Algore when writing this.
$1 Newsweak is overpriced... yes the company... the magazine is worthless.
He also wrote “Silicon Snake Oil”, which basically stated that computers were worthless in education and everyday life. He wanted to give every teacher a copy machine instead.
Sort of a cross between Feynman and Kramer.
Is that the little 16-page pamphlet I saw in the dentist's waiting room last week?
And you wonder why Newsweek Corp was sold recently for one dollar. I guess it was the best bid on Ebay. Newsweek’s specialty is eating crow.
If Newsweek was a telephone, it would be rotary dial with magnified numbers.
They were wrong on the effects of the internet on consumerism and they are still wrong on the miseducation of our youth in the classroom.
Those obsolete empty malls will be joined by obsolete empty schoolhouses.
Clifford Stoll. Inventor of [the programming language] Forth.
That’s pretty much all you need to know about Mr. Stoll.
Yes, Stoll’s 15 minutes of fame was entirely consumed by the the egg book.
The search in question was performed in 1995, not today. Having used the web back then, I can certainly believe the story.
It is easier to buy online ! Order the item specially from out-of-state (no sales tax) and then pic it up at the UPS Store and be done ! No parking lot to deal with, no waiting in line with the cashier calls on a price check, etc. !
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