Read this article first and tell me what you think. A top story on Macleans: Pornography, gambling, lies, theft and terrorism: The Internet Sucks.

The headline is very eyeball-grabbing. I followed the link from Mícheál Ó Foghlú's post in hopes of reading "a different view from the norm." I expected it to be an insightful and objective critique of the Internet hype. I was wrong. The article should be more than a list of "Seven deadly sins" of the Internet. It can be more fair and less disturbing if it makes the argument in a more balanced way. It will be more convincing if the author addresses the issue in a way like "the Internet rocks, but let me tell you how it too sucks" instead of shadowing the bright side of the Internet and telling us "the Internet sucks because it sucks."

In case you are too busy to read through the 5000-word-long bash at the Internet, I highlight some points of view worth pondering upon [ or cracking up with].

Try going back to doing the family's laundry by hand for one week, and then see if you'd gladly trade your Internet connection to get your washing machine back.

Mr. Maich is resentful at the fact that the Internet is ranked higher than household appliances as one of the 20 greatest engineering accomplishments of the past century. I agree more caution is needed when hyping the Internet. But I won't trade my broadband connection for a washing machine/microwave oven/toaster or whatever.

Google is pressing ahead with a project to scan and store digitized copies of millions of books that would be searchable on the Web. It will undoubtedly be an amazing research tool. It's also a potentially crippling blow to publishers whose businesses depend upon selling books to thousands of libraries around the world.

Before the quote he talks about pirated music. This is an undeniable dark side of the Internet. However, is Google's effort to make acknowledge accessible to a broader audience comparable to stealing music? Hmmm.

Then, he brings on an example of Wikipedia to tell us the Internet architects' "faith in the wisdom of the masses to establish truth and value by consensus" is shattered. He tells a story that the death cause of Ken Lay was erroneously created and modified in his entry on Wikipedia. This is Mr. Maith's version [ emphasis added by me ].

On Wednesday, July 5, Ken Lay, the former chairman and CEO of Enron Corp. died in Colorado. The news first hit the wires around 10 a.m., and at 10:06 Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows users to update and modify entries, proclaimed that Lay had died "of an apparent suicide." Two minutes later, somebody changed the entry to say Lay had died "of an apparent heart attack or suicide." Less than a minute later, some cooler head intervened and corrected the entry to say the cause of death was "yet to be determined." At 10:11 the entry was changed again, this time asserting that "The guilt of ruining so many lives finally led him to suicide." A minute after that, someone cited a news report that "according to Lay's pastor the cause was a 'massive coronary heart attack.' " Then, at 10:39, one of the Internet's anonymous, self-taught cardiologists wrote: "speculation as to the cause of the heart attack lead [sic] many people to believe it was due to the amount of stress put on him by the Enron trial." Finally, a few hours later, the entry was set straight, noting simply that Lay had died of a heart attack in Aspen.

I did some research on the history page of the entry to reconstruct the story. The news appeared at 14:01, 5 July 2006 [ Wikipedia time ] as the added death date July 3, 2006. One minute later it was corrected to July 5. At 14:03, the line "Lay died in July of 2006. The cause of death is unknown at this time" was added. A few following revisions added heart attack to the statement. At 14:06, an unregistered contributor changed "Lay died on July 5, 2006, of an apparent heart attack." to "Lay died on July 5, 2006, of an apparent suicide."

If you are interested, you can follow up the history page to find more discrepancies in Mr. Maich's story. It is pretty ironic for him to say "unfortunately, the masses have proven themselves truly unworthy of that trust."

--to be continued