by Joseph T. Evans

"Silicon Snake Oil" is an argument -- a whine actually -- to why the Internet is not all it's cracked up to be. In each chapter, example after example, Clifford Stoll counters each of the claims made by the media, the government, computer businesses and the public about the benefits of being online. Stoll doubts the supposed ability of the Internet to improve education, enhance library information, accelerate communication, and make research easier. "Silicon Snake Oil" is a list of every aspect that could possibly go wrong with the Internet. Stoll argues against everything the Internet has to offer, but his argument is weak.

The first reason Clifford gives to the Internet being a waste of time is on how cumbersome it is to read novels over the Internet. It's true. Not too many people would want to read a lengthy novel over the Internet. As he says, "Ugh. Can't lay the laptop on my chest. A paperback might weigh ten ounces -- a pound at most -- but this thing weighs five pounds....your every suspicion is correct: it's cumbersome, clunky, ghastly slow, and mechanical." I agree reading a novel on the Internet isn't much fun but reading the newspapers from Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, London, Ontario, San Francisco and Los Angeles comes in handy and is enjoyable. Reading a novel on the computer is like listening to an organic chemistry lecture over the phone. It's possible but not too many people want to do it.

Stoll also whines about the cost of the Internet and the cost of the equipment needed to get on the Internet. Well, if a person were to go to the news stand and buy one of these international papers, it could cost up to twenty to thirty dollars. Having an American Online account, depending on how many hours a person spends online, will cost less than most people's monthly phone bill, about twenty dollars per month; furthermore, I've talked to people in Japan, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Florida, Germany and England all within the same month for several hours at a time and the cost was much less than if I did it by phone. My phone bill was only thirty dollars and my online account was only twenty dollars. My siblings and parents all live in different parts of the state and it's hard to keep in touch and it can be expensive to talk over the phone. Almost every Sunday we try to all get into our own private family chat room and talk about what's happening in our lives. It doesn't cost us anymore than the cost of the online service, twenty bucks. I say it's worth it.

Education and information is the primary use of the Internet and I think it's living up to its promises. Clifford Stoll, in his argument, explains that the Internet isn't good for educating individuals. He began with children in one of his reasons. He said that children aren't able to use the Internet. Well, it could be true that there are several children who aren't able to use the Internet, but the children who I've seen enjoy it and actually catch on to it much more quickly than most adults. I do think that the Internet and the computer should be a part of children's curriculum because it exposes children to computers at an early age. It's wise to become computer literate as soon as possible because computers are everywhere. The person who understands computers will have a better chance at getting a good job. Children should be taught primarily in classrooms with other children, so that they can learn to socialize and work together with their peers.

Stoll also claims that computers aren't necessary for college studies. Berkeley must really be its own country or at least Clifford Stoll is living in his own world. Computers are everywhere. Most businesses that I can think of -- banks, retail and department stores, hospitals, police departments, and 911 operators -- use computers to do something for them. College students graduating without some basic computer skills are unqualified for the real world. Not learning how to use a computer is like never learning to talk on or use the telephone or read, for that matter. It's possible but it makes life much harder and lessens a person's chances of getting a good job.

Clifford mentioned that he had a bogus meter that he used to measure the amount of bogus material someone was trying to feed him. Well, I guess I have one of those bogus meters also and mine was pegged right off the scale. He mentioned a couple of statements that were just straight up bogus. He said, "[The Internet] For all its galitarian promises, whole groups of people hardly show up on the networks. Women, blacks, elderly, and the poor are all underrepresented." As an African-American, I can tell you there is plenty of information on the Internet representing African-Americans and Africans; in fact, Americans can learn more about African-American history, contributions and struggles on the Internet than they can in a high school classroom. The information is there. The user just has to look for the information like anything else. Go to Yahoo, Excite, WebCrawler, Snap, or Lycos and type in "African-American" and any of those search engines will give you thousands of web pages of information.

The biggest gripe of all and the one that Stoll so called scientifically tested is in e-mail. He compares the address that the post office delivers to and the address e-mail is delivered to. He says, "Get my home address wrong and the much-maligned postal service will take a stab at delivering it....Worst case: like in the old Elvis song, it'll come back stamped, "Return to sender, address unknown." Contrast this with e-mail. Everything in the address must be typed perfectly -- no errors." There is a reason for this. First, a neighborhood street address and an address on the Internet are two totally different things. The individual who named it e-mail "address" used the wrong label. It should have been called e-mail "phone number." The e-mail address is simply a fancy phone number; hence, it reaches the receiver over the phone line. Try calling from San Francisco to New York without entering in the area code or leaving out a single digit and see what happens. You won't reach the person you want to talk to, if you get connected at all. The same problem occurs when you try to enter an e-mail address without all the characters in the string.

Clifford even attacks the library system for using the computer rather than index cards. This man is weird. Computers make the system work much faster and the system much more efficient. The computers link libraries, so, if one library doesn't have the book you want, you just go to the library that does. Also, it's not that hard to learn the system used by the libraries. You just type in the book, author or subject you want to search for and press enter. It's really just that simple. The librarian doesn't have to take anyone on a one-hour tour to explain how the card index system works. The computer is very self explanatory. I believe that Clifford Stoll just doesn't want to make the change because he had to learn to do things the hard way and now wants everyone else to learn to do it the hard way, also.

Stoll said, "The telephone eroded the art of writing letters. Television cut into neighborhood cinemas. MTV and superstars weakened amateur musicians and hometown bands. The car destroyed urban trolley systems; interstate highways devastated passenger rail service; and airliners wiped out passenger ships. What is most at risk from wide area networks? Our library system." Stoll must live in his own world because we still have and use all the technology and communication devices that he lists. Clifford doesn't understand how evolution works. There are two ways to view how mankind came into existence. You either believe that we got here through evolution -- we all started as monkeys and then split off into our own species, the humans -- or you can go off of faith and believe what the Bible, Koran and Torah say about our existence. If we go off of evolution, which can be traced, we find that the first known man began using tools -- a rock -- this can still be seen in our distant relatives the chimpanzees. The rock was shaped into something more > useful, a hammer, then a knife, a spear and an ax. Today we can still see the remnants of that rock. It evolved into a hammer, then a mechanical jack hammer. We no longer used the rock to build our homes, gather food, or as weapons, but as we grew so did our tool, the rock. The rock never disappeared. The rock can be seen, modified, in all our tools. When we evolved the tool -- the rock -- to do something better, it helped our society to grow and become stronger. The same is true for the Internet.

The first written type of communication was called a bullae. The bullae was used in ancient Mesopotamia to help make things work a little better. The bullae was a clay ball that encased tokens. The bullae kept the middle man honest as he / she transported goods. The bullae was a credit for a promise to pay or give something to the receiver. The receiver would open the bullae and count the tokens inside. The tokens told the receiver exactly what was to be received. This method kept the middle person from taking a cut for himself while transporting the goods. This bullae system then evolved into logograms (established concepts). Asians still use logograms today. The Mesopotamians then stopped using the logograms and started inscribing, but everyone couldn't read and needed a scribe to deliver the letters.

Books started to be written and then libraries began being built to hold the books. From that library -- Poor Man's University -- people learned to write and read and speak other languages. They began to contemplate the origins of the world and the universe. They began writing and publishing their works and maybe a few could understand and read the concepts. The telegraph sped up the delivery process of information. The radio sped it up even more. It became easier to communicate to a larger mass of people. The television brought it to even more masses of people. The television informed people and got more people thinking. The computer has evolved from all of our technology thus far. Everything evolved into a more useful and efficient form. The first form of writing was simply a clay ball that evolved into paper and pen, then book, library and now, the Internet.

The rock went from a simple stone to a powerful metal jack hammer. The computer and in turn the Internet is the television, the radio, the telegraph, the pen and paper, communication and even the rock -- silicon and germanium -- all rolled up into one package. Nothing disappeared. Everything just got modified to be more useful and more efficient than its basic form. Our distant cousins -- the chimpanzees -- never evolved from using the rock. Maybe they had a Clifford Stoll in their pack who didn't like change. I can't understand Clifford Stoll's argument against the super information highway any more than I can understand the cryptogram that he leaves for the reader to ponder at the end of his book. I'm not sure how Ted Kazinsky -- the Unibomber -- viewed the Internet, but I have a feeling he didn't view the Internet too differently from Clifford Stoll's view of the Internet. I've never read a book that I've disagreed with more. The book should have been called Silly Con Snake Oil. Silly because this has to be a joke. Con as in dupe, bamboozle, befool, chicane, flimflam, fool, hoax, hoodwink, hornswoggle, trick; he is trying to con the reader into believing the Internet is no good. Snake Oil, because anyone who will buy into what he's trying to sale is not receiveing the correct medication but a fake placebo. It was hard for me to believe someone with the intelligence that Clifford Stoll supposedly has would write a book like this.

People who live in the real world understand the need for computers and the Internet. Clifford Stoll is either on something and spaced out, dumb or just trying to sell a book. He mentioned that a ghost writer helped write his first book. He either needs to quit writing books or find another ghost writer to write for him. The Internet is here to stay; it's not going any where. I have a feeling someone said the same thing about cars, locomotives, the telephone, airplanes, and even the light bulb, but there here to stay and they've made our lives much more easy. If Clifford Stoll wants to keep this life basic, then he's in the minority and maybe he should build a shack in the backwoods of Montana or move in with the chimpanzees.