Rob Tornoe | for Editor & Publisher

When I was asked to write some predictions for the upcoming year in journalism, the name Clifford Stoll immediately began ping-ponging around my brain.

The name doesn't ring a bell? Stoll, an astronomer, systems manager and professor, wrote an infamous column in Newsweek in 1995 (way back when it was still a magazine) where he predicted the internet would have no impact on newspapers and called the then-emerging worldwide web a “trendy and oversold community.”

“The truth is 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,” Stoll wrote. Obviously, Stoll missed the mark with his premature dismissal of what has become the most impactful technological achievement in the past 50 years — for good and bad. We all work online, learn online, pester our elected representatives online, and even find love online.

Stoll did nail one negative aspect of online life we all grapple with today, especially those of us working in remote newsrooms often separated from our colleagues: the lack of “human contact.”