“Famous Last Words” or “Brave New (Offline) World”

Here’s an easy one to post, because it’s mostly someone else’s words.  The following article, reprinted from Newsweek, was originally published in 1995.  The author, Clifford Stoll, has expressed his embarrassment at having written it.  It’s truly ironic how nearly everything he predicted would NOT happen ended up happening.  Irony at its finest.  There’s some truth to the statement in his last paragraph about the web reducing our actual old-fashioned contact with one another.  But the self-assured lack of foresight is a hoot. Enjoy!

The Internet? Bah!

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. 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 in 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.

Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about 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.

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht 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. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connectios, try again later.”

Won’t the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I’ll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there’s 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 obselete. 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.

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. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

“A Dash of Catch-Up” or “Thank You, Sir. May I Have Another?”

Here we go again…you probably recall from a prior post that there were two phases to our massive, all-consuming project at work.  Phase II begins tomorrow.  I often grab lunch with the primary consultant on the project, and he just told me today that he’s convinced this go-live is going to be worse–much worse–than the first one.  Oy.

But why dwell on the negative, especially when there’s so much good going on in my life?  Such as…

- Brian and I attended our first gay wedding a couple of weeks ago.  Jim and Cary, two good friends of ours in New Hampshire, were legally wed in a very traditional, New England-WASPy ceremony.  Cary teaches at Exeter Academy (one of the nation’s elite prep schools), and the wedding was held in the Episcopal church on campus.  Full-blown religious ceremony, conducted by a gay priest and his wife (still not sure about that one) who made references to the first book of Samuel, which discusses the pure love between David (slayer of Goliath, future King of Israel) and Jonathan (son of the reigning King), and who spoke of “convention and tradition being swept away by love and joy”.  Except for the fact that there were two grooms, the whole day could have been pulled straight from “The Official Preppy Handbook”.  (Cary would have it no other way)  The men’s suits were linen; the women wore pearls; the formal reception included delicate finger foods and a string quartet; the informal afterparty was held in the garden of their restored Victorian mansion.  We really, REALLY enjoyed their friends, and are really hopeful these are the kind of good-hearted, open-minded folk we’ll get to know when we move there.  And yes, we couldn’t help but talk constantly about elements we want (or don’t) at our own ceremony.

- Just got back from a long weekend in LA.  (I know, I know…I keep complaining about work, and then blogging about trips.  But these were my first two trips since Ft. Lauderdale in January, and I’ll need the memories to get me through the next month, so cut me some slack.)  Brian was raised Mormon, and the church youth group he belonged to when he first moved to Southern California was having a reunion.  He met his wife through this group, and wanted to reconnect with some of them, so we built a trip around it.

We started off Friday in Echo Park, a beautiful neighborhood of big old Victorian homes perched on a hill, with views of Downtown.  It almost made me want to live in LA.  Next we were off to Hollywood, (referring more to the conceptual Hollywood that the actual neighborhood) shopping Ventura Blvd while waiting to watch to our very first TV show taping.  We got tickets to the new Betty White sitcom “Hot in Cleveland”, and we loved every minute of it!  I’ve never enjoyed those studio tours, where they take you around on a little trolley, toss a few famous names about, and show you some empty sets.  I’m sure that’s fine for the star-struck, but I’ve always wanted to see HOW the actual product gets churned out.  Watching this taping was a nice little glimpse.  It’s like a hurricane.  The actual set is like the eye of the storm, with the actors in a relative state of calm, discussing lines and delivery and what could work better in the next take.  Then there’s the noisy, swirling frenzy of activity (writers, directors, makeup artists, camera people, sound people, lighting people, props people, script people, etc., etc., etc.) surrounding them. I expected the audience to be told to be church-mouse quiet the whole time.  But the “fluffer” kept telling jokes and eliciting laughs from us even as taping occurred.  The entire taping (two takes of each scene, plus a “pickup” of any snippets that were unsatisfactory) took about 3 1/2 hours, (for 22 minutes of actual footage) but we were told it often takes longer.  The good people at the studio fed us sandwiches and cookies during the taping, too. (a nice touch) If you happen to follow the show, it’s the episode where the tornado hits.  I think it’s set to air next week or the week after, on TV Land.  If you happen to hear a high-pitched yelp when Susan Lucci makes her cameo, that would be a star-struck Brian.

We spent Saturday morning in Pasadena, continuing our tour of college football stadiums by visiting the Rose Bowl.  We noticed a huge banner hanging from the Norton Simon Museum (which you all know from watching the Rose Parade every year like I do, right?) advertising an exhibit by the Japanese artist Hiroshige.  Brian, having twice lived in Japan, begged me to go. (as if he had to)  It was a spectacular exhibit, and the museum itself is a gem…not too large, but full of high-quality stuff.  And the gardens are beautiful.  Next we were off to South Central to see USC and the Coliseum.  Impressive campus…I guess cheating at football DOES pay, after all.  Saturday night, while Brian and his sister-in-law went to the reunion, I rode the subways around LA-LA Land.  LA does have a transit system, you know.  And while it’s far from all-encompassing, it is impressive, it’s expanding, and it seems to be well-patronized.  Keep it up, Metro.

Sunday was family day–a long lazy brunch with Brian’s sister-in-law Wendee, then dinner with his Aunt Bert (wife of Uncle Pat) and her daughter Linda.  It was great hearing Aunt Bert’s stories…about her parents emigrating from Germany…about Orange County when it was still full of orange groves and vegetable farms…and about her kids, lying by the window every night, watching the fireworks at Disneyland before they went to bed.

Monday was spent at Venice Beach, my favorite part of LA because it’s so funky-cool.  I’m always drawn to places where the hippie in me can set himself free.  And yes, Virginia, we ate at C&O Trattoria, one of my favorite restaurants in all the world.  I first stumbled on it during my very first trip to LA, fourteen years ago (Ohio State – 20, Arizona State – 17), and I’ve gone back nearly every trip since.  And it’s not just great because of the memories, either.  It’s REALLY good.  While Brian and I were there on Monday, an Australian cooking channel was filming a feature on it.  We were told we might see the segment on The Travel Channel here in the US someday, but they couldn’t get more specific than that.

So now, as I prepare to dive back in to go-live hell, I have a few upcoming nuggets of excitement to remind me why I work so hard in the first place:

1) Our little Benjamin is heading off to college.  Sad as that may be, I’m so excited for him, just like I was for his brother and sister before him!  Bless his heart, our gentle giant is really finding it hard to face adulthood, and is really dragging his feet every step of the way.  It’s to the point where he’s admitted he needs help, so we’re trying our hardest to encourage and nudge without criticizing or pushing.  Although he’s been accepted to the Newark campus of Ohio State, he applied too late to get on-campus housing.  He realizes he really needs the sheltering and nurturing provided by dorm life, so he’s also applied to Wright State.  I know, I know…how great can a school be if they’re STILL taking applications and STILL have housing for THIS FALL?  But actually, it’s good (not great) school for Theatre, and Ben has been approached by a drama school about attending, so we’re thinking that maybe once he gets his feet wet and finds life on the outside ain’t so bad, he’ll take the plunge and really go after his goal of becoming an actor.

2) Look back just a few posts, and you’ll find me gushing on and on about my BlackBerry Storm.  You’ll actually find the word “inseparable” somewhere in there.  My, how the times, they are a-changin’.  My BlackBerry died on me a couple of months ago, and although it was still under warranty and was replaced for free, that naturally soured me on it a bit.  I’ve also never been thrilled with the web browser, which is painfully slow. I got excited about this new Android phone from Motorola (the “Droid X” it’s called, continuing Verizon’s branding of Android phones as “Droid”).  It’s a beast, with a 4.5-inch screen, an 8-megapixel camera, high-definition video screen, and screaming-fast processor.    I pondered the Droid X, then decided I should just make a few tweaks to my BlackBerry so I’d fall in love with it again.  Those tweaks included nothing more than a new “theme” to change the look-and-feel of the interface, plus a different web browser (Opera Mini) to make web surfing on the phone more pleasurable.  But you know what?  Those two relatively minor changes caused my phone to go haywire.  Totally.  Utterly.  It’s as if the damn thing knew I thinking of cheating on it, and was taking its revenge proactively.  How bad was it?  Every 10 seconds, the phone would show me an hourglass, and for the next five or so seconds, it was useless.  Imagine that…being able to use the thing only half the time, and then for only 5 seconds a pop!  And I don’t know what it was doing during that five-second hourglass span, but the processing was so heavy that my battery was draining in an hour.  Of course, the low point was while I was in LA, trying to navigate the city without the aid of Google Maps.  I was livid.  Since I got home, I’ve managed to completely reset the thing to its factory settings, and the problem has gone away.   But hell, I’m stuck with the default, out-of-the-box device again.   If I can’t make the icons look like I want, and I can’t browse the web the way I want, and I can’t download the apps I want, I may as well have an iPhone. (“oh, no he di’nt!“)  So I think I’m going with the big, fancy new Droid X, which comes out in exactly 37 minutes.  But I find I’m really torn.  I loved that Storm in its day, and as always, I’m racked with Catholic-bred guilt over spending money which could go to Doctors Without Borders to satisfy my materialistic lust.  Ick. Just writing that makes me feel dirty.

3) Last, but not least, we managed to book one other trip, for next month, to coincide with some work Brian’s doing.  Three days in Seoul, 5 days in Beijing.  ’Nuff said.

Over the course of the past few months, as I’ve found myself with a fleeting spare moment or two, I have begun to draft a couple of different blog entries.  Since much of this go-live weekend will involve just sitting around and waiting for jobs to run, I’ll see if I can finish those off and share them with you.