When Stoll was promoting his “Silicon Snake Oil” book, I happen to visit a bookstore where he was giving a talk (I had no idea he was going to be there). I recall disagreeing with a lot of what he said, but the only think I remember specifically was this: when he was searching for info in the real world, like a library, he would also stumble on interesting unrelated info. He said this didn’t happen online. But even in pre-Google 1995, there were search engines (I think I used HotBot), and I often would find interesting unrelated things in my searches.
Note that Stoll himself left a comment admitting he was wrong:
Of course, he wasn’t 100 percent incorrect, his Usenet description is pretty accurate about a lot of forums online (not here of course).
Amid some of the more laughable stuff, there are a few kernels of truth that still apply, in many instances.
The most resonant, to me, is his argument about the internet being “a wasteland of unfiltered data.” While there is plenty of excellent information there, sifting out the good from the bad still sometimes involves quite a bit of work, and there are still too many people (undergraduate college students included, in my experience) who will simply repeat the first information they find, and who apparently have no filters of their own that might help them differentiate the bullshit from the useful information.
At the same time, though, i think this is less a problem of the internet, per se, than it is a problem of teaching people how to evaluate information. Even before the internet ever existed, some sources of information were more reliable and more comprehensive than others. What the internet has done is make much more information available; we still need to practice the old techniques of looking at the source critically and asking ourselves what its strengths and limitations might be.
With modern laptops, especially netbooks, and their long battery life and 3G wireless connectivity, sure you can. Just be careful you don’t get sand in it.
Kindle, iPad, etc., etc.
Just look at the influence of the internet in the last Presidential election campaign. Plenty of smaller state and local races also now rely heavily on internet use.
First, i’m not sure that many people (anyone?) ever argued that brick-and-mortar stores would become completely obsolete. Internet fraud is not a dead issue, but millions of transactions are now conducted every day, with only a very small percentage encountering any problem.
In some cases, this might be true, although the new social networking sites have, in some ways, changed how we define “human contact.”
And as for the human contact aspect of business, i’m quite happy to shop for computer parts without an underpaid Best Buy employee giving me misleading information about his products or trying to upsell me on an expensive extended warranty that i don’t need.
Maybe this is the difference between the scientific mind (Stoll’s) and the ADD/dilettante mind (mine), but I find fascinating serendipitous content online all the damn time.
I also tend not to frequent sites unless there’s a favorable signal-to-noise ratio. My favorite hangouts don’t take kindly to shouters.
In the internet and access to information age it becomes all about critical thinking. Not IQ’s or grades, the ability to think critically.
Unfortunately our education systems stepped away from teaching such skills a generation ago.
You don’t have to look beyond the health care debate to see that people are content to swallow whatever their political preference says, and regurgitate it, rather than actually apply any critical thinking skills.
Home schooling makes it even worse, in my opinion.
We were never great at it. We wanted it taught, but not really understood, lest it interfere with future generations’ ability to follow the leader. So it was done mostly by reverse example, left to the kind of white males with loud voices and unfortunate haircuts who are the only people we deeply trust to socialize our youth. These would bitch at you about Critical Thinking as just another procedure to memorize without actually thinking critically.
Cliff is a close friend of my mother’s. I would say that in person, he is the quintessential ADD/dilettante mind. He literally one time broke off a sentence mid-word while talking to me in order to lunge toward the hummingbird feeder, because he was so overwhelmed by the vision of a hummingbird (which of course flew away when he lunged at it).
That said, he is also a remarkable person that I like a lot. He is an interesting and diverse thinker, and a devoted parent to his two kids.