[scalio]

Fascinating how the analysis gets wrong what becomes possible or doesn't (online shopping,...), but hits the nail on the head concerning the psychological and social aspects.

> The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen.

> 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?

> 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.

[bumholio]

He couldn't imagine the vast technical improvements that solved all immediate, practical challenges he faced: sending money online, comfortable, ubiquitous devices with unlimited connectivity, etc.

He clearly saw the wider limits of technology in relation to society. Liquid and online democracy has failed, we are in an age of autocrats that have weaponized online propaganda and misinformation to directly reach their voters. The freedom of the press increased online but it's quality dropped markedly, the cacophony effect is real. Alienation and engineering addiction are the name of the game for tech giants and their bottom line. Online self teaching is great for adults, but a very poor substitute and at most a complement to competent teachers in schools.

[whatshisface]

>Liquid and online democracy has failed, we are in an age of autocrats that have weaponized online propaganda and misinformation to directly reach their voters.

Give society a little time to react, this has only been a talking point for one election so far.

[andrew_]

I would argue three elections (Obama x 2). No campaign mobilized like Obama's before him. And it was widely hailed in part to staffers who were able to leverage the web and tap the base, and new eyes, using social media. Love him or hate him - his campaign was full of misinformation, and one can point to his platform on, and comments about, the intelligence agencies of this country as a prime example.

[solarkraft]

What misinformation did Obama spread?

Out of the last few presidents one especially comes to mind when thinking about profiteers of misinformation.

[zouhair]

Any predictions that pertains to the technological aspect of our lives is utterly futile.

Imagine you are in the mid 90' and you say to someone that in the next decade we will have a camera, a video camera, a radio, a music and video player, a voice recorder and much more in just one pocket. Saying it like this make it look insane.

On the other hand psychological and social aspects are linked to our brains that didn't change much in the course of the human recorded history.

[notahacker]

The idea that pocket sized devices which had shrunk and become more popular since the 1980s would shrink further and potentially be consolidated into fewer devices was less a radical idea and more an extrapolation of trends in the 1990s.

An iPhone would have been strikingly impressive in 1995, but few people would have difficulty grasping what it was, or that there might be a demand for it, especially not if they already possessed a Walkman and mobile phone, thought their next camera might be a digital one and had considered buying a PDA

[laumars]

Normally I might agree, but tablets where already being common place in sci-fi (Star Trek TNG, 2001 Space Odyssey, etc) and PDAs were starting to get prototyped in real life around that time too. So we are not talking about technology that was completely alien to mankind in the 90s.

In fact the reason people were predicting great things for future tech and the internet (which the author of this article is arguing against) is because it was technology already emerging - not some imaginary theoretical stuff.

Ok, the pace of change and the specifics (smart phones with high speed internet, eink displays, etc) might still have taken people by surprise, but the rest isn't that shocking. I mean back in the mid 90s I was building 3D websites in VRML and just assumed by the 2010s all sites would have a rich, communal, skeuomorphism interface. Clear I was wrong on some parts (thankfully) but not that far off the mark.

So the signs were already there but the author was too busy trying to imagine those predictions being utilised with then current technology. You could argue that is a failure of imagination on his part but I'm tempted to go further and say it was down right ignorant. He's clearly techy enough to understand the then current tech better than most yet failed to notice the emerging technologies. And he clearly witnessed the evolution of technology for the 10 years leading up to the 90s yet assumed hardware would suddenly just stagnate at that point. That was his biggest mistakes and ultimately why his predictions were so out of sync with what many others had predicted (yhise if whom did see the change happening and the future potential they had).

To be honest though, I do wonder how much of his comments where based on his own comfort zone and not liking a the thought of a digital future so allowed his own prejudices to bias his vision of the future.

[adoctor]

In the 90s I'd have readily believed that. My only objection would be that it might cost too much. It turns out smartphones became very cheap and ubiquitous.

[sien]

There was the Palm Pilot. The Pilot 1000 was released in 1996. Digital Cameras were around at Universities as well. Mp3s were around in 1997. University students had mobile phones by this time. GPS was around. People who were into hiking had Garmins. The first Nokia Communicator was released in 1996 too.

The idea that there would be continuing improvements and decreases in size was taken for granted.

Mind you, the improvements in mobile performance, screen performance and cameras weren't all put together.

[mysterydip]

> When most everyone shouts, few listen.

I feel this is most evident on Twitter. I see it in the indie gamedev scene: everyone trying to advertise their upcoming game or steam sale, trying to build an audience, but no one listening to anyone else's.

Another aspect being sold (implicitly or explicitly) is the democracy of the platform: anyone (commonfolk) can talk to anyone else (celebrities, CEOs), but the fact it's possible works against itself. There's so many voices no one really gets heard except a handful.

[hcs]

I feel like he was right about it being worse, but didn't realize there would be so much more of it.