25 years on, here are the worst ever predictions about the internet

Back in the Nineties, many experts didn't think the internet would live to see its first, let alone 25th, Internaut Day.

By Amelia Tait

On 27 February 1995, the American magazine Newsweek shared the truth about the internet.

“The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works,” wrote Clifford Stoll, in a piece that has thankfully been preserved online for the ages. “How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc,” Stoll went on, “Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.”