Why not send a fax? It’s far more universal than e-mail – we not only find fax machines everywhere, but they can all speak to one another. Moreover, they can handle diagrams, pictures and any language … I find it easier to just scribble a note on a plain piece of paper and send it over fax … Network mail, even decade-old e-mail, lacks warmth. The paper doesn’t age, the signatures don’t fade. Perhaps a future generation will save their romances on floppy disks and Internet Uniform Record Locators. Give me a shoebox of old letters.
Predictor: Stoll, Clifford
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Silicon Snake Oil,” writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the Internet’s future, discussing e-mail: ”What a demonic way to communicate. When it works perfectly, messages flash to their destination in a minute. But make a trivial mistake or have the bad luck of a system failure, and the mail is lost without a trace. Why not send a fax? It’s far more universal than e-mail – we not only find fax machines everywhere, but they can all speak to one another. Moreover, they can handle diagrams, pictures and any language … I find it easier to just scribble a note on a plain piece of paper and send it over fax … Network mail, even decade-old e-mail, lacks warmth. The paper doesn’t age, the signatures don’t fade. Perhaps a future generation will save their romances on floppy disks and Internet Uniform Record Locators. Give me a shoebox of old letters.”
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: Communication
Subtopic: E-mail
Name of publication: Silicon Snake Oil
Title, headline, chapter name: An Inquiry into Mail, an Experiment with the Post Office, and a Comment on Cryptography
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 157, 158
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney