Spectacular Crystal Ball Fail

Newsweek have recently been uploading articles from archived past issues onto their website, though I'm sure Clifford Stoll wishes they hadn't. Here's a snippet from his 1995 piece offering predictions on the future for the internet.

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is 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.

On hearing that his dismissal of computers being used in schools and the notion of online shopping was being digitalised, do you reckon he winced much?