Anyone rememberClifford Stohl? He sprang to fame back in the late 1980s when he published The Cuckoo’s Egg, an Internet thriller (from before the days of the web) where he tracked an international spy ring through the Internet. He followed that book with Silicon Snake Oil in 1995, an anti-technology look at the Internet and the way it depersonalizes human interaction. What made me think of Stohl was an old article from Newsweek Stohl penned before the release of Silicon Snake Oil entitled, “The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana.”
What’s fascinating is that Stohl has been proven so absolutely and complete wrong in 15 years. Here are just of few of his predictions from 1995:
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.
Well, of course we are all living in a virtual world these days. We are telecommuting. There are interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. The printed newspaper is dying and all kinds of multimedia content are being delivered online. The Web is changing everything, for better or for worse, and in an irreversible way.
Stohl’s biggest argument (in 1995) is that the Internet depersonalizes human interaction. He claims that computers are really isolating us rather than drawing us closer together:
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.
But that was before the birth of social media. I have always been an advocate for human interaction, and I always say a face-to face meeting is preferred to a phone call or an online chat. That’s why we have a weekly Ask the Coach phone call where NETSHARE members can interact with career coaches and get practical advice. It’s the same reason I have a weekly welcome call with members to get to know them personally, and see how we can help them with their career challenges.
However, contrary to Stohl’s predictions, social media has proven to be an invaluable tool to promote more personal interaction. Technology-driven conversations via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are helping all of us become more connected and broaden our reach to touch and connect with even more people. Once we connect online, we can move those exchanges into more intimate conversations via e-mail, phone, and in person.
Stohl continues to be an interesting visionary worth listening to for new ideas, but no one gets it right all the time. A lot of his predictions from 1995 have proven themselves to be completely wrong, and I think we are all the better for it.
