This bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of online addicts, network neophytes, and library-automation insiders … Such a dream assumes that … books are all digitized and available on the computer. They aren’t. They never will be.
Predictor: Stoll, Clifford
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Silicon Snake Oil,” writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the Internet’s future implications:”One of the great promises of the online world is fast access to great quantities of information. Internet proponents talk of libraries without books, the time when essentially all publications will be available over the network. We’ll be able to read and access any document from our workstations. Books will be distributed electronically. I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of online addicts, network neophytes, and library-automation insiders … Such a dream assumes that … books are all digitized and available on the computer. They aren’t. They never will be.”
Biography:Clifford Stoll was an astrophysicist who also wrote the influential books “Silicon Snake Oil” (1995) and “The Cuckoo’s Egg.” A long-time network user, Stoll made “Silicon Snake Oil” his platform for finding fault with the Internet hype of the early 1990s. He pointed out the pitfalls of a completely networked society and offered arguments in opposition to the hype. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Libraries/Databases
Name of publication: Silicon Snake Oil
Title, headline, chapter name: Wherein the Author Considers the Future of the Library, the Myth of Free Information, and a Novel Way to Heat Bathwater
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 177
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Tencer, Elizabeth L.