The Internet? Bah! - HUGELY overhyped!

While the part about online commerce turned out to be wrong, I'd say about half of what that article says remains valid.

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.

While there are plenty of reviewers and critics now, that still hasn't solved the problem of knowing what's worth reading.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. 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.

There's certainly some truth to this.

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.

True, online news is gradually making the print media less relevant. But he's correct that it hasn't fundamentally changed government, at least so far.

The internet was actually UNDER hyped. It was, and still remains, much under appreciated, in what IT can do. The WWW, which technically runs over, and is often used instead of the more appropriate term, WAS overhyped, but the hype is now generally POSSIBLE. Will it become reality? *****HIGHLY***** unlikely! WHY? Because it could have been done with the phone, TV, modems, the internet, and WASN'T! In fact, for every decent site on the internet there may be well over 1000 to counter it. A lot of people think that the internet/WWW was where forums, graphics, email, etc.... were born. The FACT is that it happened in a very SIMILAR way a DECADE earlier! EVEN full commerce! And it was COMMERCIAL, meaning someones little old grandmother on a fixed income could buy it and use it. And a simpler version happened about a decade before THAT, though it was spotty and mostly for hobbyists! Although THAT didn't have full commerce.

And SURE they FINALLY have large stores displaying and selling real goods to the masses, but the governments are trying to destroy that. And SURE they FINALLY have colleges, but some of those have gotchas.



Steve