What the Internet will never be!

• Monday, 22 June 2009
• By Catheryn York
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I came across an article today that was written for Newsweek in February 1995...interesting to read his lack of foresight.

The Internet? Bah! (computers cannot replace books, teachers or newspapers)

Ive posted a few comments here but you can read the full article here:

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.”

“Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”

“We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software… These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training.”

“Then there’s cyber business. 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.”

I am sure he is wishing these words never left his thoughts!

Shaq on Twitter

• Monday, 22 June 2009
• By Catheryn York
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Did you know that Shaquille O’Neal’s has a twitter account? The_real_shaq Twitter account has 1.3 million followers.An article regarding the setup of the account (yes he didnt do it himself) stated that "Getting started was not that difficult. We just needed to get Shaq plugged into Twitter and set him loose. He quickly gathered a following because of his authenticity. (“Shaq has zero ability to fake anything. He’s transparent and genuine.”)" After a few months, Things got more interesting when the agency collaborated with Shaq on an idea: what if he used Twitter to give the world more than his ideas and random observations? This resulted in: “random acts of Shaqness,” in which Shaq uses Twitter to do good deeds for fans such as offering free tickets to basketball games. If you’re lucky enough to catch the right tweet from Shaq at the right time, you stand a good chance of meeting him at a food court somehwere, and you could pick up a free ticket. Great Idea!