f7d9395c_atings_and_reviews___Gwern_net__Review
[Title] Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway [Author] Clifford Stoll [Rating] ★★★ [Year] 1996 [Review] 
I read this not long after publication, and re-read it a year ago weeding through my books. Between the two, I would have to give it 2-3 stars. The good part is that at the time, he was correct in puncturing or deflating a lot of the most hyperbolic claims about the benefits of computers and the Internet: online shopping did have a ways to go, kids’ education was not being improved by computers (and may still not be), etc. The bad part is, he was correct only in the short run. On many claims or predictions where he was absolutist, he is laughably wrong now, and we can expect his track record to continue to worsen as time passes. This is actually a pretty common failure mode for skeptics of technologies: I call this the Amara effect, after Roy Amara: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
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