An interview with cyber-skeptic: Cliff Stoll

Communication World, June-July, 1996 by John Gerstner, Phil Theibert

One of the dirty little secrets of the Internet is that users are remarkably cheap. Even if you could bill them, users are not willing to pay a nickel.

'Click.' Feather-weight Cliff Stoll, in the ring with heavy-weight champion Mike "Internet" Tyson. Stoll, weaving and bobbing . . . scrawny and long-haired ... stuns the crowd as he lands a series of sharp blows to the head.

"Computers dull the skills we use in everyday life."

"The Internet, that great digital dumpster, confers not power, not prosperity, not perspicacity."

"Why are drug addicts and computer aficionados both called users?"

"Click." Cliff Stoll, astride his faithful donkey . . . steadfastly flailing at the flotilla of Internet windmills that dot the high Spanish plain of LaMancha. Gleaming white in the moonlight, he can make out their perfectly lettered nameplates: "Enlightenment" "Prosperity" "Utopia" and he scoffs:

"There is a technocratic belief that computers and networks will make a better society. That access to information, better communication and electronic programs can cure social problems. I simply don't believe it."

"Click." Cliff Stoll single-handedly gripping the tether of a gargantuan Internet dirigible. It is crammed with noisy Internauts, thrilled to be bound for the promised Cyberland. Stoll grips the rope with all of his might, but the incredible blast of hot media air finally wrests it free. As the huge craft rises overhead, he shouts one last warning, which no one onboard seems to hear:

"Much of what happens over the networks is a metaphor - we chat without speaking, smile without grinning, and hug without touching. How sad to dwell in a metaphor without living the experience."

So at a time when you can't pick up a newspaper or watch a television commercial without confronting the word Internet - and big Internet fish are eating the little ones - Cliff Stoll is the long-haired hippie standing beside the Great I-Way waving a yellow caution flag and holding up a hand-scrawled sign that reads: "www.enough.already." Maybe it's high time.

Stoll's version of where the Information Superhighway is taking us, and at what cost, is entertainingly packaged in his 1995 book "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway." It is a conversational and witty meditation on what Stoll believes are powerful and dangerous Internet myths ... such as that electronic data exchange is faster, more reliable and less expensive than communication by phone, fax or even the postal service. And that computerizing our schools and libraries will improve education. And that connecting to the Internet is a wise use of your time.

"Every minute spent on the Internet is one minute you didn't spend with your loved ones," he says. "While you're connecting to the stranger on the other side of the globe, you're not teaching your child how to draw."

Stoll's attack on cyber-life would be easier to dismiss if he were simply another neo-Luddite smashing computers out of ignorance or fear. But Stoll is more reformed technogeek than technophobe. A planetary astronomer by training, he cobbled together his first computer in 1976 and logged onto the Arpanet, the ancestor of the Internet, soon after to share research with colleagues. Even today - on the World Wide Web he loves to loathe - he has a home page (http://www.OCF.Berkeley.EDU/^stoll/) where he advertises his books and apologizes for not answering all his E-mail.

In 1989, Stoll helped make hyperspace hip with his best-seller, "The Cuckoo's Egg." It is a revenge-of-the-nerd true tale of how he used programming wizardry to track down a gang of German hackers that were stealing U.S. security information and selling it to the KGB. The crooks had cracked the computer system he managed at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and it took Stoll a year to catch them.

Stoll still lives (without a car or television set) in Berkeley, which may partially explain his sunny '60s sentimentalism. For all of us who've ever cussed a computer when it crashed for no good reason, or simply felt guilty about spending so much time online for so little, Stoll's views strike a vibrant chord. Even though you can't help feeling Stoll's cynicism is tongue-in-cheek at times - and there's a sinking feeling that we humans are probably powerless before the onslaught of technology anyway - Stoll's download of doubt rings loud and refreshing: Enter the Internet with caution, and keep a sharp eye on your rearview mirror.

What tipped you over the edge . . . you didn't start out being anti-computers, did you?

Quite the opposite, I have always been very intrigued by computers. I love technology. I love computers. I own six of them. I've been using computers for 35 years. I'm on the Internet daily. I've been online for more than two decades. I simply began to take note of the private doubts my fellow computer jocks were voicing in the cafeteria and hallways. Things like how frustrating, time-consuming and expensive it is to keep hardware and software current and working. Things like how the Internet promises so much, yet delivers so little.