"Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana" Viewed Through the Lens of the "AI Revolution"

This is a well known article that has been shared here a handful of times over the years. The author, Cliff Stoll, was a cybersecurity pioneer and very well informed.

I'm curious now. Are any other articles from ~30+ years ago that are also just as relevant today?

I think you could take this article today and replace "internet" with "AI" and it would be hard to tell it was written 30 years ago. In particular, the concern that "the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. 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." has taken on increased importance as the internet becomes flooded with AI generated content.

Many of his underlying assertions remain true: "What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert."

But despite all that, a number of the predictions did not stand the test of time and I suspect the same will be true of many of the predictions being made today that AI is a completely overhyped fad: "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."