David H. Rothman

“ Going in the other direction, many people on the Internet love to bash the print world as benighted and even a little worthless. Who needs publishers when you can post your own books and little magazines for the world to read on the Net? That’s simplistic in many cases; I’ve got a little more faith in the editors at Knopf or Viking than I do in the proofreading gang from the Department of Chemistry or Joe’s Literary Bar.
People on the Net, however, are right to criticize the print media’s ignorance of electronic publishing and computer networks. ”

“ The WordStar had benefited from Seymour Rubinstein’s salesmanship. But Rubinstein also had boasted a solid computer background; and unlike some of the new people in software, he wasn’t just a businessman cashing in on an exploding market.
Again and again a pattern was beginning to repeat itself. Programmer-entrepreneurs would tough it out in the proverbial garages—for some reason programmers work in garages, authors in garrets—and score with the right software hit. Propelled by little more than their drive and technical expertise, their companies would grow. ”

“ A quarter-century ago scientists dreamed up a predecessor of the network to let computers jabber to each other across the United States, even after a nuclear attack. Fearless professors followed with electronic talk on topics ranging from biology to poetry.
Now it’s as if everyone is on the Internet—not just Playboy but Penthouse, some Arizona lawyers who love to inflict junk ads on the innocent, a Florida manicurist, Democratic and Republican stalwarts, thousands of college freshmen, punk teenagers, and elementary schoolers in London, Singapore, Minnesota, Nova Scotia—you name it. ”

“ He works at the bank and has programmed its computer to round interest downward, for instance, rather than upward. The sliced-off money goes into a dummy account. From hundreds of cheated customers, maybe thousands, he’s amassing enough over the years for a new Buick. He may even have told the computer to steal prudently and not clip anyone more than twice a year.
It’s the old salami trick, an MO of countless embezzlers inside and outside the computer world—ranging from pudgy, fat-bottomed drones to glamour figures in Hollywood and on Wall Street. ”

“ Once I had felt that the Clinton-Gore people might truly share my own egalitarian dreams. I’d thought that nonlobbyists like me stood a healthy chance. I had been writing about computers for close to a decade; earlier I had covered a poverty beat, and I knew how we could drive down the cost of small computers so that someday even Head Start kids could read electronic books on them. What better way to encourage democracy? The whole country, not just the elite, could grow up understanding abstract thought. ”

“ How’d you like to be the chairman of a corporation faced with an ugly data-security scandal—and the possibility of a stockholders suit? You needn’t be in the scandal personally. Your stockholders could charge you with malfeasance, if not misfeasance, for letting it happen. So could the Securities and Exchange Commission and other feds. When companies hush up computer crimes, it’s not necessarily for high-minded reasons such as protecting assets by playing down vulnerability to electronic crime. Consider Baird’s experiences. ”

“ Everyone is trying to reinvent the Internet in his or her own image, even if, with these changes, the Net would no longer be the Net. What’s really pathetic is the ignorance of the would-be meddlers. Censoring the Net would be about as successful as trying to dam the Pacific. The same decentralization that made the Net more nuke-resistant, in the Cold War days, makes it harder to control. And how can Washington sell the Net on Fed-friendly chips for coded messages when scores of powerful encryption products are on sale in Russia and the rest of Europe? ”

“ Even in basically white-collar fields, some bosses and employers may look askance at universal telecommuting.
Some, for instance, may miss the hints of body language, the blink of an eye, the tapping feet, the little, subtle signs that many people feel to “read” friend and foe. Others simply miss seeing people hard at work. ”

“ Barlowe was a gadgeteer’s heaven on wheels, full of audio and video equipment. People on the Web didn’t just enjoy gloriously descriptive stories from Powers: with Mosaic-style software they could see a picture of her wearing a sun hat on a beach or gaze at sand dunes or waterfalls or whatever she happened to be writing about at the time. If they owned a sound card, they could hear, too. She walked around carrying a microphone so large that it resembled a folded-up umbrella.
Powers might well be one of the first multimedia reporters to work for a Net-oriented daily newspaper. ”

“ Even on some good networks people can wreak havoc on each other’s files by overcrowding disks with information. There can even be network saboteurs.
“You can’t network unless people act as a team and care about their colleagues’ records. If a company’s isn’t like that, it might be better off with a strong data-processing department to police everyone. Or they might just use micros not connected to each other—so that people will crash only their own disks.
“They might network only after they’ve successfully run employees through a training program to promote good work habits.” ”

“ Andrew Carnegie and the rest did not make their money off art and entertainment, part of Gates’ master plan. For Bill Gates to give away great paintings and manuscripts will be like Carnegie giving away steel. His motives may be the most ethereal, and with a $10-billion net worth, he can afford many a donation; but a conflict will forever arise between Gates the businessman and Gates the philanthropist. Just which side will prevail when he dies? If not in life, then in death, by way of his lawyers, will he have the decency to turn all his old masters loose on the Net for free viewing? ”

“ Murphy, now a computer security consultant, wisely observes: “You’re safe from average crooks—they don’t envision a nice, mild-mannered human being working at anything more than a souped-up typewriter. But you can never, never be able to 100 percent secure a computer system. Even the most trusted user could say, ‘F— the damn payroll,’ and destroy your records.” ”

“ The Internet isn’t just a medium of special benefit to the deaf; it’s also one for the seriously depressed, many of whom, if made Netless, might try to do without any company offline.
As with thousands of other Net lists, people come and go, some of them overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages; Stoll is right to characterize the Internet as like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. But a core of stalwarts remain enthusiastically on Walkers, and along with Harmon and Goldberg, they’re rather small-townish in cyberspace in the best of ways. ”

“ Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems, said:
“Select has very few commands. There are very different people in the world. You’re very attracted to choice and options, and you seek the power that WordStar offers. But very simply, people are different. Some like to drive Maseratis, and some like to go twenty miles per hour.”
He was right. There might even be a version of Select better than today’s WordStar; software is constantly changing, and when you shop, you must do your homework to make sure you’re buying the best program available for your needs at the time. ”

“ I myself was amused when lobbyists representing industries such as music and publishing would rant on and on about the need for “creative incentives.” If business people at the megaconglomerates really understood incentives, they would cut out their caviar, sell off the executive jets, and spend more than a modicum on garden-variety artists—not just the Mailers and Madonnas. ”

“ Pacing isn’t just monitoring, after all. The work is electronically moving past the worker as if it’s on a factory conveyer belt. Think of all the lemons Detroit put on the road in its eagerness for new production records. “With older workers the error rate isn’t as high,” Smith says of white-collar jobs paced by machines. “Maybe it has to do with the nervousness of young people. Older workers always report more job satisfaction. They become used to the drudgery. It’s a hell of a way to put it, but that’s what happens.” Not that many older workers love machine pacing, either. ”