I agree that the piece is educational in some important ways. There are several criticisms he makes that are still valid, and we really should be taking this as a sign that we need to address these problems. But the part where I think "what an idiot" does reasonably come in is that he seems convinced that since the internet's problems were not already solved (and no solution was immediately obvious) that they never would be.
The easy example would be his dismissal of ebusiness. But more interestingly, he observes "Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data". It is just as true today that underneath it all, the internet is a mess of disjointed and almost entirely useless data. But that's no reason to think it's hopeless. It's just a problem, and one that we have made huge advancements in dealing with. E.g. PageRank. It's now trivial to find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar.
My point being: he addresses a lot of serious problems with the internet. Many of them remain serious problems today. But it's clear that in a big-picture kind of way, he really did miss the point. And that point is that problems get solved, often in clever and unforseen ways. We shouldn't write the piece off as silly, but we should take it as a lesson in shortsightedness and drawing the wrong conclusions.
The easy example would be his dismissal of ebusiness. But more interestingly, he observes "Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data". It is just as true today that underneath it all, the internet is a mess of disjointed and almost entirely useless data. But that's no reason to think it's hopeless. It's just a problem, and one that we have made huge advancements in dealing with. E.g. PageRank. It's now trivial to find the date of the Battle of Trafalgar.
My point being: he addresses a lot of serious problems with the internet. Many of them remain serious problems today. But it's clear that in a big-picture kind of way, he really did miss the point. And that point is that problems get solved, often in clever and unforseen ways. We shouldn't write the piece off as silly, but we should take it as a lesson in shortsightedness and drawing the wrong conclusions.