Beware of False Prophets...

Cliff Stoll is a hero of mine - in fact his book, The Cuckoo's Egg, is one of the major reasons I became interested in IT at all. Cliff was an astronomer at Berkeley before his highly-visible capture of a hacker working for the Russians. Becoming an instant techno-celebrity, Cliff rejected the glitzy projections that the Internet was going to change the world. He also rejected the way people were eschewing real relationships and real experiences for the digital equivalent offered by the computer industry.

It's an important statement to make, that the computer isn't a substitute for reality. Some of his grander predictions here shown are a little embarrassing, but the core truth is still there: there's nothing that can make up for the real.

The Internet? Bah!