Reprinted by Erie Daily Times, Erie PA 2-18-96; Houston Chronicle, Houston TX 2-25-96; The Detroit News, February 25, 1996; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh PA 3-3-96; Wilmington, Delaware News-Journal, Wilmington, DE 3-3-96 (note: second half of article was missing in that issue, and the newspaper ran it in its entirety on 3-10-96); Jacksonville Times-Union, 4-3-96, p. A11.
Note: Interestingly, many papers have changed the title to be more dramatic (and not reflective of the article's content); those papers made it sound anti-Internet. Some readers have also incorrectly interpreted it as an anti-Internet piece; their unsolicited comments and my responses are available.
Great hypes -- followed by great letdowns -- occur once per decade. In the 1960s, the first business computers were billed as "total" data systems, but the big mainframes were dumber and slower than today's PCs.
In the 1970s, database management software was supposed to put a wealth of information at everyone's fingertips, but the methods of organizing data were far too clumsy at the time.
In the 1980s came expert systems, touted as able to make decisions like human experts such as auditors or geologists. Firms spent millions, only to learn they had vastly underestimated the task of defining and entering all the know-how that humans employ.
Now the Internet is hot. As before, there is genuine reason for excitement, but expectations are well beyond what the technology can deliver now.
The Internet is hyped not only as the key to all the world's information but as an agent of fundamental change in the world. Surveys reported in the Wall Street Journal say nearly 10 million U.S. adults have Internet access -- most of them cruising via the World Wide Web -- and more are signing on. The crash, however, is not far away.
At my business school, I have watched students get acquainted with the Web. They are excited, and many become obsessed: Look at all the stuff you can get! But usually the obsession dies off in a few weeks. Four problems manifest themselves. Barely noticed at first, each grows from annoying to painful to intolerable.
1. The Internet is slow. Studies have shown users will not tolerate computer response times more than a second or two. The typical mouse click on the Web results in a much longer delay; the more graphics on a Web page, the slower it is to load. Popular main-menu pages like those of Disney and the "Tonight" show take more than a minute over a fast phone connection -- and all you have then is a choice of more clicks.
2. The information is hard to deal with. It is well established that people read more easily from paper than from a screen. People on the Web also become lost in their mouse clicks, forgetting how they wound up at the current page, distracted from their original purpose. Lack of consistency in page design adds to the confusion.
3. The connections are unreliable. When you find a valuable resource, you can "bookmark" its location for future access. But often accounts are closed, files are moved, and connections are disconnected, leaving you with a cryptic error message.
4. It is very difficult to filter the vast amount of information on the Internet. Much of it is useless, like the amateurs' pages full of either complaints or blind praise on the topic of your search. Discussion groups are so large, that you need to wade through a sea of opinion before finding a true expert on, say, travel or audio -- and how do you know who's an expert?
Despite the problems, total Internet use (in person-hours) is still believed to be on the rise. But I think the Internet has been riding waves of initial obsessions. New users connect, use heavily for a few weeks and then, as their use ebbs, more newcomers connect, providing eager but temporary replacements. In a Nielsen survey last fall, one-third of the people with Internet accounts said they had not used them at all in the past three months -- an ominous sign.
Moreover, most of the people dedicated to being "early adopters" of the technology are probably already on board. Unlike these die-hards -- who tend to be patient with the bugs -- many people connecting now are actually going to expect value and convenience. The barriers will snuff their use at a much earlier stage.
Hence, Internet use will soon drop and stay down as long as the present barriers exist. The press will then overreact with stories on "the failure of the Internet," and there we will all be, let down again by technology.
Over time, of course, Internet speed will increase, and other problems will be addressed. Then we will have a real winner -- but only if we minimize the disappointment that looms now. People have long memories for disappointment.
So let me close with a few words of advice. To designers of Web sites, I say: Don't overload the technology. Until communication speeds up, use graphics frugally. And focus on delivering useful information: A recent study found 90 percent of visited sites to be seriously lacking in content.
Finally, we all need to temper expectations. New technologies do not mature and take hold overnight, let alone change our culture. The telephone was invented in 1876, yet only 62 percent of American homes had one by 1950. And the airplane has utterly failed to deliver on its greatest promise: Because it reduces the perceived distances between people, it was expected to eliminate war.
Granted, the Internet brings people together in ways that airplanes don't. But if we want a fundamental change for the better in human relations, it will take more than the presence of a new technology to do it.
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* Note: This sentence only appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
version of the piece.
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