Clifford Stoll was right; the web isn’t nirvana

Check out the video. &quot;Clifford Stoll talk from 1999&quot; at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HvqFo-EU9W0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HvqFo-EU9W0</a> &quot;The man is certainly eccentric.&quot;<p>&quot;This is a video of a presentation given by Clifford Stoll at a Sequent User&#x27;s Group &#x27;Enterprise Solutions Summit&#x27; in Portland, OR. I happen to find this program on a DVD as I was cleaning out some old boxes and figured it was probably the only surviving copy of this presentation in existence. Of all the programs, presentations and lectures I&#x27;ve attended over a long career in the IT field, this presentation has always stuck with me and I figured it would be a shame if this were lost to the world forever. I hope you enjoy the presentation as much now as I did then.&quot; -- William Danger Newman

Many technologies do not democratize or result in leisure time or cure any of the legion of ills that humanity suffers. Tech usually just amplifies the existing power of a political entity, be it statesman or soldier or businessman.<p>The singular piece of revolutionary tech of the last millennium which actually has improved lives for millions, is the laundry machine, which unlocks many hours of peace and relaxation or education or whatever is needed, for the poor, particularly to the benefit of women who traditionally washed our clothes. The Internet is nice, but perhaps not as pivotal as that invention.

A lot of this is too much for me, is too grumpy, disregards the value of online space &amp; connectivity too much, favors the past.<p>But Im sympathetic too.<p>One thing that stood out, that- by seeing tagging &amp; aggregators, de.icio.us and digg- I thought wecd be much better at by now is layering context &amp; critiques, building trust &amp; peership &amp; review as layers atop the web page medium. Tagging, organizing, categorizing, issue-based-information-systems (IBIS), and other techniques were, I though, by now going to be voluntary overlays to help us organize &amp; orient, to discern. There have been neat projects- e.g. Newstrition[1] browser extension- but generally progress has been minimal. Im surprised after all this time how right Stroll still is:<p>&gt; <i>Lacking editors, reviewers, or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.</i><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;our.news&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;our.news&#x2F;</a>