Washington Post Editorial: "If I could, I would repeal the Internet"

[Sregener]

Yup, life would pretty much be the same without the Internet, except when it saves someone's life: http://www.postbulletin.com/news/loc...5b46dd288.html

I'll agree that we, the common man, could easily live our lives without email, Facebook and Twitter. But those things are not what the Internet is really useful for, and to say that they are what the Internet is all about is just worthless. It's like saying that cities are bad compared to an agrarian society because it just clusters many citizens close together, making them easier to target.

[kennyc]

Slow editorial day.......take something that is popular and attack it.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by din155

I don’t drive, so if all the cars stop tomorrow, I won’t feel the difference

You *might* if all the trucks bringing food into the city and taking waste out stop.

The crotchety fool doesn't appreciate just how critical to the Post's survival their paywalled internet income is. Which is to say, as bad as things may seem to him today, in the alternate universe without internet he'd be worse off.

[din155]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

You *might* if all the trucks bringing food into the city and taking waste out stop.

The crotchety fool doesn't appreciate just how critical to the Post's survival their paywalled internet income is. Which is to say, as bad as things may seem to him today, in the alternate universe without internet he'd be worse off.

That seems to be the point of this article. How can I twist the reality to my perception and bring as many people to the post website as possible.

What he doesn’t realise is that many people will never visit post or read his article again after this trash.

[soulfuldog]

Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer

For those that don't want to read the article, here's a summary:

I too made do with the summary... never mind the internet, where would we be without the Simpsons?

Originally Posted by fjtorres

You *might* if all the trucks bringing food into the city and taking waste out stop.

Is this where I'm supposed to argue that the automobile's insatiable appetite for petroleum makes us extremely vulnerable. Civilization is at the mercy of foreign governments or enviroterrorist cutting off the supply. At the same time this technology is so unimportant that we should abandon it. Isn't it worth abandoning Sunday drives and trips to the corner store in order to save civilization?

(Incidentally, there is a difference between the invention of the car and many other modes of transportation that rely upon the internal combustion engine. For the most part, cars are personal transportation devices that we could do without. Other types of vehicle have far more utility. Now the car is something that society could probably do without. Yes, it would take some time to adjust to. The car has made too many alterations to the design of cities and the functioning of society to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Yet once those changes have been made, urban infrastructure would be cheaper to maintain because there would be far less frivolous abuses of it.)

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The crotchety fool doesn't appreciate just how critical to the Post's survival their paywalled internet income is. Which is to say, as bad as things may seem to him today, in the alternate universe without internet he'd be worse off.

I don't know about this. While television news and cable made a dent in newspaper readership, I think nothing has hurt them as much as the Internet. It is simply too easy to be informed on your own schedule without getting a newspaper for most people.

I, on the other hand, continue to get a printed newspaper because the coupons that are included in them more than cover the cost. I'm actually saving money by paying for a newspaper.

Originally Posted by Sregener

I don't know about this. While television news and cable made a dent in newspaper readership, I think nothing has hurt them as much as the Internet. It is simply too easy to be informed on your own schedule without getting a newspaper for most people.

The death of the newspaper is a bit of an overstatement. Transitioning from newspapers to websites is fairly natural since you are dealing with a textual medium in both cases. Newspapers got that. Newspapers went online. While many of those newspapers may be suffering online, it has a lot more to do with having more competition from domestic and foreign sources than a failure to adapt to the new technology.

Claiming that newspapers are dead because they're online is like claiming that the novel is dead because people are buying ebooks. That just seems silly to me.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

Worse - a soccer ball

Well, at least they aren't doing "wheelies" and "donuts" on your front lawn or "crop circles" in your fields.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

The death of the newspaper is a bit of an overstatement. Transitioning from newspapers to websites is fairly natural since you are dealing with a textual medium in both cases. Newspapers got that. Newspapers went online. While many of those newspapers may be suffering online, it has a lot more to do with having more competition from domestic and foreign sources than a failure to adapt to the new technology.

There are good reasons for newprint folk to bemoan the internet but the Washington Post transitioning to the (paywalled) web and ebooks is what is keeping them afloat these days. Barely.

The biggest threat to newspapers, and what is really decimating them, is *not* online news but rather online classifieds; Craigslist and eBay most prominently, Google to a lesser extent. Dozens of small regional operations...

Classified ads was the secret revenue stream that helped newspapers survive the challenge of radio and TV and when that revenue vanished, the bottom fell out of their business model. And for most local papers there is no end in sight; some major metropolitan areas have not only gone down to one "daily" but that newspaper isn't even daily anymore.

Biting the hand feeding you isn't wise.

Here, from 2009:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...spapers/18168/

In more detail:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/internet/15500/

And more recently:

http://flashesandflames.com/2013/04/...online-battle/

[Sregener]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Claiming that newspapers are dead because they're online is like claiming that the novel is dead because people are buying ebooks. That just seems silly to me.

You quote me, but I can't for the life of me figure out where your ideas have come from. Where did I say that newspapers are dead, or that they are suffering because they are online? You've got an interesting straw-man there, one I simply cannot comprehend how you constructed from my post.

The Internet has done great harm to newspapers. It has nothing to do with the newspapers themselves being on the Internet.

[CommonReader]

I just don't understand it. This journalist started his writing career in 1969, when we all might have been obliterated in an instant or woken up in a nuclear nightmare just because someone at the Kremlin had a seriously bad day or because of some minor military spat spinning out of control. Yet nowadays we are supposed to live in mortal dread because of some goat herders with rifles and because someone might raid our bank accounts or shut down our power supply through the internet?
I don't want to flame here but what he really wants to say seems to be, that the internet perverts the natural order of things, where bad things happen to other people, notably those at the receiving end of the prodigious American firepower. Cheering for the next little war is so much less fun when it might literally hit home at the cosy offices of the WP.

Originally Posted by Sregener

You quote me, but I can't for the life of me figure out where your ideas have come from.

First paragraph of your post. Based upon your response, I'm guessing that I mistook your intent.

[crich70]

I knew an older woman who didn't like computers and would have been quite happy for them to be done away with. Of course if that happened her social security checks would have been several months late in arriving I imagine, but she didn't think of that. Like it or not modern tech. is here to stay and we've reached a point where we can't get along without it. And all of it traces back to the humble plow. The plow made it possible to plant more food so the population could rise and people had time to do other things besides trying to keep themselves fed and clothed.

[wizwor]

A lot of people and institutions would rather the internet had never come to be. Wal-Mart, for instance, could probably do without Amazon and there is no Amazon without the internet. I'm guessing Border Books would vote against an internet as well.

I also agree that it is not very important. Some tend to make it more important than it should be, but a week without the internet can be cathartic. It's inconvenient, but it's not the end of the world.

My little town loses utilities almost annually for a week or so. No electricity, no cable, no internet. When the snow stops, we pull out our generators and grills and make the best of things. When one ventures out for food and gasoline, the stores are dark, but they are open. Employees stand at the door tabulating orders and making change.

I'm pretty confident that the world would recover from whatever iCatastrophe comes along. In the mean time, the internet has spawned a lot of ideas that have led to goods and services that make out lives easier and more entertaining.