After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. 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. 
 
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 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. 
 
 Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure. 
 
 What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them—one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connectios, try again later." 
 
 Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen. 
 
 Point and click: 
 
 Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames—but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life. 
 
 Then there's cyberbusiness. 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 obselete. 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. 
 
 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. 
 
 STOLL is the author of "Silicon Snake Oil--Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," to be published by Doubleday in April. 
 
 © 1995 ||||| Microsoft’s Ballmer: ‘No chance Apple iPhone is going to get any significant market share’ 
 
 Monday, April 30, 2007 - 10:42 AM EST 
 
 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was interviewed by USA Today's David Lieberman at the sixth USA TODAY CEO Forum, in conjunction with the University of Washington Business School. The interview took place in front of an audience. 
 
 
 
 One question touched on Apple: 
 
 
 
 Lieberman: People get passionate when Apple comes out with something new — the iPhone; of course, the iPod. Is that something that you'd want them to feel about Microsoft? 
 
 
 
 Ballmer: It's sort of a funny question. Would I trade 96% of the market for 4% of the market? (Laughter.) I want to have products that appeal to everybody. 
 
 
 
 MacDailyNews Take: Like the Zune? Note how Ballmer substitutes Windows vs. Mac market share when asked a question about iPod and the upcoming iPhone. It's Apple that dominates the music market, not Microsoft. Recognizing that fact, it's obvious that Ballmer gives "sort of a funny answer," as he certainly would trade the Zune debacle for Apple's iPod+iTunes in an instant. 
 
 
 
 Ballmer: Now we'll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. 
 
 
 
 In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo. Credit that to Steve (Jobs) and Apple. They did a nice job. 
 
 
 
 But it's not like we're at the end of the line of innovation that's going to come in the way people listen to music, watch videos, etc. I'll bet our ads will be less edgy. But my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune. 
 
 
 
 Full article here. 
 
 MacDailyNews Take: Ballmer plays fast and loose with the truth. He can "prefer" to have his crap software in "60% or 70% or 80%" of so-called "smartphones," but in reality, he has but 4.6%. 
 
 
 
 Canalys worldwide total smartphone device market - market share Q4 2006: 
 
 Symbian - 72.5% 
 
 Linux - 16.9% 
 
 PalmSource - 2.0% 
 
 Microsoft - 4.6% 
 
 RIM - 3.8% 
 
 Others - 0.2% 
 
 
 
 Ballmer's 85-year-old uncle will probably never own an iPod because he's related to Steve Ballmer, not because of anything to do with merits of the device. In the relatively small market of 85-year-old uncles, we'd venture to guess that Apple's iPod dominates that market as thoroughly as it does all other demographic groups. 
 
 
 
 We have iCal'ed Mr. Ballmer's statements for future reference. 
 
 
 

– Remember the one about the guy who said the Internet will fail? Ha, ha, ha. Well, while we're waiting 15 years later for that daring prediction to come true, Asylum runs through a few other notables that fell flat: 'Portable computers:' "The portable computer is a dream machine for the few," the founder of an early computer mag wrote in the New York Times in 1985. And "no one would want to take one fishing." IPhone: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in 2007. "No chance." Twitter: Sci-fi writer and journo Bruce Sterling told the NY Times in 2007 that "using Twitter for literate communication is about as likely as firing up a CB radio and hearing some guy recite The Iliad." Books: 15th-century monk Trithemius didn't think they had a shot, writing that "printed books will never be the equivalent of handwritten codices, especially since printed books are often deficient in spelling and appearance." To read how those Beatles will never make it and more, click here.