[rohansingh]

There are two things to take away from this. The first is Clifford Stoll's own comment when his essay resurfaced over in 2010. The whole thing is worth reading [1], and it ends with:

> Now, whenever I think I know what’s happening, I temper my thoughts: Might be wrong, Cliff…

Secondly, while Stoll is wrong on many points in this essay, what's amazing is that he hits on things that were definitely broken or deficient in 1995 and had to be fixed to get us to where we are today:

* difficulty of reading on CRT screens

* lack of online payments infrastructure

* difficulty in searching and filtering through Web pages (i.e., search)

These were all very tough problems, and stacks of money have been minted by Amazon, PayPal, and Google by tackling them. I'm impressed by Stoll's ability to identify these problems clearly as early as 1995.

[1]: http://boingboing.net/2010/02/26/curmudgeony-essay-on.html#c...

[WoodenChair]

I don't find pointing out the obvious "amazing". Anyone who looked at a CRT in 1995 knew they didn't want to read a book on it.

[argumentum]

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” - George Orwell

[Peaker]

The deepest insights are often obvious in hindsight.

[WoodenChair]

Yeah but what I'm saying having used the web in 1995 is that his insights were obvious then too.

[Peaker]

It isn't enough that they are obvious when they are pointed out explicitly.

If they were obvious, you'd find other articles/authors explaining the same issues?

[WoodenChair]

I'm not going to go look it up for you, but there were plenty of skeptics in the mid 90s of eBooks, online banking, and the accuracy of search engine results. In fact it was probably the prevailing opinion of established business interests, hence why the web took much of the old guard by surprise. I'm not sure what you're arguing? Do you think the majority were visionary?