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The internet is just a fad

  2. smorrisey
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"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 connectios, try again later'

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 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.

A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where--in the holy names of Education and Progress--important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued."
smorrisey

13 responses // The internet is just a fad

  • Where else can you isolate yourself in a dark hole, lit only by a screen, and be connected to the world?
    I know there's something terribly inconsistant in that sentence. Something it shares with the www.
    huntre
  • i think that i could not be the person I am today without the internet, as unfiltered as it may be. there are things on the internet worth cherishing
    Raven7
  • I think that the internet is a wonderful place to find information, if you know how and where to find it. If I go to New York and ask a question, and even if I asked every single person in NY the same question and listened to their answers, some of it would be crap.

    But if I know who to ask, and where they might be, then I can ask the right people the right questions and build a relationship of trust with them. Just as I have built a relationship of trust with sites like Engadget, or The New York Times' site (my homepage).

    P.S. - I don't think that everything, like shopping at a mall, will be online someday. That is not social enough. People need social, whether or not we want to admit it.
    Electric_Curent
  • There seems to be a lot of unfounded assumptions in those paragraphs. The 1st that leaps out is, why are sales people an essential ingedient?

    I've been able to order airline tickets, make restaurant reservations and even order pizza delivered without any problems. Another false assumption is that stores would be obsolete since as was mentioned they are good places for social activity.

    I've also done business online with people in different states that I wouldn't have been able to do before and had no problems with money transactions using PayPal.

    It takes a brain to filter through information no matter where you get it from, it's just easier to access from multiple sources online. You'd have a lot harder time doing it from books in a library, it would take longer and you'd still have the problem of choosing what is relevant.

    Sounds like a short between the headphones is the problem since it still takes someone that knows how to use the resources online.

    (edited to add, I found out the article was written in 1995 so no wonder it was so delusional, the Net has evolved a lot since then and even the extreme fear of people going totally online isn't going to happen since most people recognize the need for a balance)
    Argon18
  • You're obviously a n00b... or on a REALLY SLOW CONNECTION.
    Battle of Trafalgar... took me 15 seconds to find it. Copy pasted the name from your article to my Firefox search bar, ctrl+\|/ [down arrow] to switch from Google to Wikipedia (which is edited constantly... literally), and then hit enter, about another 5 seconds to load; and done. Went back to check and you could have just as easily typed it into Google and got the same result.
    Also who the hell says "over the network," probably the same people who say "the information highway"; a.k.a. people who DON'T use the internet.
    I believe your article is nothing more than a 'fad' or an attempt at attention
    - In solidarity with serious internet users world wide,
    Taboo Tongue
    TabooTongue
  • Yet despite this, Newsweek and/or the author was willing to put this entire story on the Internet itself...awesome.
    brianjhong
  • I'd say PRINTED media could be "just a fad"... Not to mention an unsustainable usage of raw materials that has a long legacy of POLLUTION- but yes books/magazines/newspapers have editors. But editors have agendas created by an interest in pleasing sponsors and owners.

    So if you can read, reason and learn there is little that the internet cannot help you with...
    kennyJ
  • Even though we're getting closer to paperless with devices like the iPhone, I very much doubt print is going away anytime soon since it only takes light use it, it can be displayed at any size and left there for others to see.

    The thing about sustainability is if as many trees are planted as are cut down. And paper is biodegradable.
    Argon18
  • well if you try and just use google all the time than the internet isn't great, but online libraries offered by colleges and universities to their students are pretty revolutionary.

    internet has been incredibly impactful on our culture in many ways and if you don't believe me google search 'why the internet is important' and click on the link that will connect you to a youtube video submitted by a young english girl in Taiwan which very eloquently talks about the fundamental shift in politics and mainstream media that has been caused by the technological paradigm shift that is the internet.

    just kidding, but just because it's not "outselling" doesn't mean it's not revolutionizing.
    Kurka
  • Just remember that there are bad-written books edited by bad editors on the shelves everywhere. And that even some big encyclopaedias have wrong statements on them, maybe because of bad editing or maybe because science changed a few things.

    The biggest difference is that the Internet is the fastest, and usually (thank god!) _F_R_E_E_.

    Cheers!
    feisar
  • i think the internet sucks...i mean i think the internet is the bomb....i mean
    cheakywillie
  • Two words:

    information literacy.
    chet_arthur
  • http://www.thegooglestory.com/
    KennyJ, I totally agree. The article referred to was written in 1995, do you remember what the internet was like at that time? It was an overload of info, taking hours to view. Then came Google's idea, different from other competition, see how. >
    My family and I saved serious $ buying cars on the internet, and time looking at houses w/out an agent. I would've never survived college and c'mon consider the source. REALLY? NEWSWEEK didn't support the internet in '95? Thats like Ford saying foreign cars are a fad. In '95 few had found a way to profit off the internet, now it's a gold mine, dig in or go broke.
    walski

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