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by bronson
4569 days ago
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This seems like a glass half empty / half full situation. "Why The Web Won't Be Nirvana" got a lot wrong, true, but it also got a lot right. His prediction of books not being sold on the web was incorrect, but his explanation of why (cold, less fun at the beach) still applies. Yes, the Eternal September happened, but it wasn't as bad as some feared. I haven't read Silicon Snake Oil but I did read the original The Road Ahead. Silicon Snake Oil can't be much worse than that, can it? So... Many years ago my Tek 7904 oscilloscope fried itself. Again. I realized I just don't have the time to keep it limping along. I bought a soulless DSO then posted a Craigslist ad for my whole setup (12+ plugins including 7CT1N, probes, cart, ...) at an absurdly cheap price. This machine that I had been trusting for a decade, it had to go. Quick, because this was depressing. One person responded to the first ad. Cliff complimented the squigglescope and chatted about how great these old tools can be and how he uses them in high school classes because the new stuff just doesn't teach as well. He said he couldn't do anything about mine but offered some suggestions and that he'd keep an eye out for a suitable home. That made my day. The scope sold second try. Hope it's fixed and keeping someone's bench warm somewhere. No doubt Cliff is still resisting technology and doing his part to make the world a more welcoming place. |
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1. "No online database will replace your daily newspaper" OK, he's wrong here. (Well, wrong, soon. Although clearly newspapers are struggling, they're not extinct, yet.)
2. "No CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher" How is this wrong? To the extent MOOCs replace face-to-face teaching, they might require fewer competent teachers. Anyway I took his point to be that learning is about more than viewing static content like a CD-ROM.
3. "No computer network will change the way government works" How is this wrong? It's overly optimistic to say that computer networks have transformed government. (For the better. They've clearly transformed the efficacy of tracking people.) You could argue that money in politics is worse than ever, and actual democracy is weaker than ever. I don't see how technology has improved this substantially or is likely to in the near future. We can hope and try, and kudos to civic hackers chipping away at this from the bottom up.
Although I love the internet and disruption, I don't see how we can laugh at him for being unduly skpetical.