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Here’s Clifford Stoll, writing in Newsweek in 1995, with a case study in not using one’s imagination and only focusing upon the problems of the present or the past, rather than dreaming about the possibilities for the future:

On newspapers:

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Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper. . . .

On electronic publishing:

Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

On cyberbusiness:

We’re promised instant catalog shopping—just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet—which there isn’t—the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Silly internet dreams!

HT: Greg Pallowitz, via Greg Gilbert

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