Is the Internet overhyped?

Is the Internet overhyped?
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in
Northland Reader
now
Reader Weekly
May 25, 2000

“We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet...”  (Pres. William J. Clinton, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2000) (1)

Really?  The band room?  The wood shop?  The English class?

Does the band room need Internet access to provide music?  Or would the money be better spent on buying sheet music and acquiring and maintaining instruments?

Does the wood shop need Internet access to provide project plans?  Or would the money be better spent on acquiring and maintaining tools?

Does the English class need Internet access to provide copies of Shakespeare?  Or would the money be better spent on buying hardcover copies of Shakespeare, Richard Wright, and Ursula K. Le Guin?

Clinton’s statement and similar statements by many others are indicative more of a mania to adopt the “latest and greatest” without thinking through all the consequences.  This mania is seen both in government and private organizations.  Sometimes it comes from the top down, sometimes from the bottom up.

“OK, Mr. Author, if the Internet is such a mania, how come you make so much use of it for your articles?  And if you use it, shouldn’t school kids learn to use it?”  Yes and no.

Yes, the Internet can be a wonderful tool, but it can also be a great waste of time.  “A library is where you go to find facts. The web is more like a garage sale: it's possible you'll find what you want, but only with a lot of digging, searching, and wading through things that smell funny.” (2)

I found out just how true this was in researching this article.  I’ll come back to this later.

No, school children can learn to use the Internet at anytime in their lives.  I am active in the University for Seniors at UMD.  Many of the members are using computers for a wide variety of tasks.  Many of them first used a personal computer within the last ten years.  The successful users among them have two common traits: a love of learning and an ability to type.

“Even some usually pro-technology types, like Apple Computer Co. founder Steven Jobs, have expressed doubts [about computers in schools], suggesting that what students need is more classroom focus on basics like writing and mathematics and higher-level skills such as critical thinking.”  (3)

Because Frank James paraphrased Steve Jobs, I wanted to find Jobs’ own words.  I did a search with Alta Vista for “critical thinking”, “steve jobs” “apple”, and “education”.  Alta Vista found 39 web pages.  The first page was an Apple page of “Hot News”.  I searched it for “critical thinking”, but it had changed!  It was the only Apple page of the thirty-nine.

I checked a few other pages, but most of them “smelled funny”.  So, I decided to start with Apple’s home page and search within Apple’s own site.  I did a search of “critical thinking, steve jobs”, but my browser (Internet Explorer 4.5 for the Macintosh) wouldn’t load the page!  The URL (or address) that Apple’s search feature created was so long that it wouldn’t even fit in the error message window!  I couldn’t even search for “Jobs”!!!

One of the Internet success stories is Amazon.com, a bookseller!  In fact, if you do a search for something on the internet, you are quite likely to find reviews of books on the subject rather than the text as written by the original authors.  Of course, you can search the Internet for free because the search site depends heavily on revenues from booksellers who want to sell you books on the subject of your choice.

One of the most optimistic works on the future of technology is Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead.  It is available in good old-fashioned paper form.  The only way to get the electronic form (a CD-ROM) is to buy the book.  I searched for “the road ahead” on the internet, and no Microsoft page was in the first 10 pages of the 3,997 found.  I went to Microsoft’s home page and did a search for “the road ahead”.  The first 10 pages of the 67 found were not the text of the book.  I did find that the CD-ROM might have an error!  (However, on August 2, 2007, the page describing the error is no longer available.) (

Should computers be in schools at all?  Of course computers should be in schools, in appropriate places.  The first is in typing, sorry, keyboarding.  Who wants to learn to type on a big heavy mechanical typewriter like I did over 40 years ago?  But we don’t need to have the latest, biggest, fastest computers to teach typing.  Even a Commodore 64 can do that.  The second is in the library as an addition to a great, humongous collection of books.

For it is from books and great mentors that we learn writing, mathematics, and critical thinking.  Let us make sure we have well-stocked libraries and highly-respected teachers.  When we have achieved those two goals, then maybe we can think about adding computers.

(1)I accessed this quote May 4, 2000 at http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/SOTU00/sotu-text.html.  That page is no longer available.  I imagine each President deletes his predecessor's records after the National Archives has copied them.  However, the Clinton library's copy of the speech does not have that phrase or any other mention of connecting classrooms to the Internet!  After an exchange of emails with an archivist I learned that there is a briefing copy and a transcript.  My search had only turned up the briefing copy.  The archivist gave me the link to The American Presidency Project's copy. and the correct link in the Clinton library.  I couldn't find the latter because I searched on the date of the speech, but the speech was indexed under the date of inclusion into the web site!  Searching the web is not always a solo endeavour.

(2) “Kev's Collection of Cool Quotes”, Kevin Killion, accessed August 2, 2007.  Kevin moved from the URL that I originally had.

(3) “Plan to wire all schools to Internet falls behind”, Chicago Tribune Online, Frank James, Chicago Tribune Washington Bureau, June 22, 1999,  file available in Chicago Tribune paid archive.

©2000, 2007 Melvyn D. Magree

Lies, damn lies, and misstatements

Much political hay is being made about President Obama saying that people could keep their current insurance.  As thousands find that their current insurance is being cancelled, there is a clamor that Obama lied.

Did he really lie?  That is, did he make a statement that he knew with certainty to be untrue?  Or did he make a statement that he believed to be true given the information that he had?

Consider that any leader has to rely on the advice and information provided by hundreds of people.  If that leader had to verify every piece of information he or she was given, would anything ever get done in government or business?

What Obama and his staff had no control over was all the insurance companies deciding it was not in their best interest to have people keep those older policies.  I’ll leave that to historians to figure out who was right or wrong, truthful or deceitful.

Now the shoe is on “the other foot”.  Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is accused of lying about the deliberate traffic jams caused around Fort Lee by his staff and associates.  He had directly asked some of them if they had any involvement in the situation.  They all said no.

Christie has worked with some of these people for years and has relied on them for good advice.  Should he believe anything differently?  If he was suspicious, how much time should he spend finding out more?  If he did so, how many other things that he should attend to would be ignored.

If Christie was not actively involved in the traffic jams, he did make the mistake of being gleeful about Fort Lee’s problems.  After all, the Democratic mayor did not support him in his reelection.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” is probably one of the most infamous lie and even damnedest lie ever made by a U.S. President.  Bill Clinton later backed off that strong denial, but the Republicans jumped with joy over his predicament.  Lots of federal money was spent on this investigation and that investigation and an impeachment.

But the whole mess rings hollow when Republicans have done similar acts and made similar denials.  I wish politicians would spend more time on thoughtful evaluation of laws and policies and less on personal attacks.  What a way to run a country!

Many have criticized President George W. Bush for a long string of lies about Iraq, for example Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction”. Now, was he just parroting what his advisors were telling him because of their own agendas or was he directly involved in creating these falsehoods?  We may never know.

But I can guess about one misstatement that he made that has become infamous – his advice that in response to the World Trade Center attacks Americans should go shopping. It was a stupid remark, but consider its underlying meaning.  The attacks were meant to disrupt the United States.  If people went about their ordinary business, then the planners of the attack would have failed in their attempt to disrupt the country.  In other words, if we shopped as we normally did, then the country would not have been disrupted as much as planned.

We probably all have experiences of sales people telling us what they think we want to hear, not what we need to know.  Sometimes they withhold details; sometimes they really do lie; and sometimes they divert us.  How often have you heard, “It’s a standard contract”?  In other words, just sign, don’t bother reading it.  Do you wonder why we had a mortgage crisis?

My favorite misdirection was decades ago when we bought a TV in a big box store.  We told the salesman that we liked a particular model, and he replied that he had one in the back room.  Only later did we see that as a ploy to get us to buy on the spot.  Of course he had one in the backroom; he may have also had one dozen.

This whole column is a misdirection to write about an irate phone message I had last week.  The caller was upset that I had spoken badly about Gannucci’s in my column of January 2.  I was flabbergasted!  I meant no such thing!

OK, let’s parse what I wrote to find the irritant.  Remember that I was writing about going to a plant-based diet and doing my best to stick to it.

“Just my luck that every item on the menu had cheese and/or meat.”  Many restaurants have meat, dairy, or eggs in most if not all of their menu choices.

“So I went with a turkey sandwich, figuring that was the leanest meat that I could get.”  I thought that was a neutral statement.  Maybe I should have said the turkey sandwich was delicious.  It was, but is that relevant to that fact that I made a choice?

“The organizers of the monthly social plan to go back in January.  I think I better call ahead to Gannucci’s.”  If I want to join the group and would like to avoid meat, dairy, and eggs, I should ask the restaurant in advance if they have any alternatives.  If not, maybe I’ll have a turkey sandwich again.  I am a vegan not because I object to turkeys having their heads cut off but because I don’t like what the turkeys might do to me.

This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2013-01-16 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/01/16/2766_lies_damn_lies_and_misstatements