Comment by wehadfun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wehadfun | Hacker News Reader

Baloney: telecommuting workers - WRONG

Baloney: interactive libraries - CORRECT

Baloney: multimedia classrooms - CORRECT

Baloney:electronic town meetings- CORRECT

Baloney:virtual communities - WRONG

Baloney:Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems - HALF CREDIT (they both exist)

Baloney: freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic - CORRECT (Governemts just clamp down on the internet)

no online database will replace your daily newspaper - WRONG

no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher - CORRECT (No CD ROM can keep kids off streets while parents at work)

no computer network will change the way government works - CORRECT (Goverments will change the way computer networks work)

Finding the date of the Battle of Trafalgar takes 15 minutes - WRONG (0.18 seconds on Google)

Baloney:we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. - WRONG

Baloney:instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. - WRONG

Baloney:We'll order airline tickets over the network, - WRONG

Baloney:make restaurant reservations - WRONG

Baloney:negotiate sales contracts. - HALF CREDIT (Mix of phone, text, email, and in person)

Baloney:Stores will become obselete. -CORRECT (stores are being built everyday)

That's not a particularly bad hit/miss ratio. The mid-90s were full of a lot of overheated rhetoric about the massive life-changing applications of the Internet. Skepticism like the points above can be broadly grouped into two types of target.

First, you had claims that the Internet would substantially improve civic engagement, government transparency, education, etc. The results are mixed on this end, mostly because a lot of the claims expected people to be more virtuous than they really are -- that people would 'get up and get involved' if they were only given the necessary access.

Second, you had claims that were essentially impossible with the structure of the Internet as it existed. This is an era where Internet access for most people was extremely slow, expensive dial-up service. Other dial-in information services had existed for decades and had not brought about a revolution. Most of the "wrongs" above only really became wrong after the introduction of always-on broadband, WiFi, cheap data plans, and smartphones, none of which were obviously on the way in 1995.

I have to disagree with your comment about how CD ROMs aren't keeping kids off the streets. That would be equivalent to saying video games don't keep kids off streets. Kids these days don't sell drugs or commit crimes on the streets, or even PLAY in the streets anymore, they sit in their room or friends room and play video games all day. This is a common fact. Unless you're talking about 3rd world countries where most people don't have a PC or internet or even electricity.

I never saw kids selling drugs on the streets. In schools on the other hand....

> Baloney: multimedia classrooms - CORRECT

Khan Academy says "hi!"[1]. I'd only give half credit for this, considering the success that Khan Academy has had in schools and with individual learners.

[1] https://www.khanacademy.org/coach-res/case-studies

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