NetFuture is "a largely undiscovered national treasure" (Peter J. Denning, New York Times, November 25, 1999).

What People Are Saying about NetFuture

For a collection of responses to one particular issue of the newsletter, click here.

Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine:

The best, most literate and intelligent critique of technology available. Talbott is honest, bright, and devoted to understanding the role of technology in our lives. He manages to host a conversation around his wonderful essays that actually moves issues forward. Most excellent and highly recommended.

I should let you know how impressed, informed, enlightened, and provoked I am by your newsletter.

How far we've come! Even publishing titan Henry Luce thought it crucial to preserve the boundary between "church" and "state", between the integrity of journalism and the profit-seeking wiles of advertising -- a line now routinely demolished by those who cover the wired world in today's print and electronic media. That's why the independence and lucidity of NetFuture are so wonderfully refreshing. Steve Talbott's newsletter is one of the few places on the Net where wisdom finds a voice.

Just wanted to let you know how much I have enjoyed reading your essays over the past many months. You have a deep and refreshing view of these complex issues, which are often treated so superficially. I've assigned several of your essays in my Networks and Society class. Your fan, (signed)

"NetFuture is...an important critical voice in the age of hype" (Whole Earth, Spring, 2000).

For all us tin men and straw men, NetFuture is a reminder to keep our hearts and heads about us in the challenge of a hugely seductive catastrophe.

NetFuture is without doubt the most incisively reasoned critical voice about the role of computers in our lives.

I'm a professional information technology analyst and academic, and I find NetFuture one of the more interesting resources in the field, primarily due to the author's willingness to go against the grain and raise important questions about the use of information technology and its implications for society.

I use issues of NetFuture in a course I teach in our administrator preparation program. I think it is a terrific resource, and a great eye-opener for my students, who when they think of computers in schools tend to think uncritically. They are sure that they must get more kids in front of more computers. I spend a lot of time in the course getting them to think about why they would want to do that.

You may well consider my concern over a possibly lost issue of NetFuture a compliment to your skill in choosing topics and in expounding your views on them. In this age of information overflow on all fronts, not many people read texts over 5K that do not have graphics in them.

I've spent many years trying to get a slow-moving, tradition-bound institution to appreciate some of the possibilities of technology in adult education, and as a result, my first reaction to NetFuture was one of mingled alarm and anger. These feelings changed as I read more of your work and began to appreciate the logic of your concerns. Since then I've come to regard NetFuture as a kind of ethical touchstone. It has helped me reflect on the consequences of the educational programs I create and also on the effects of technology on the quality of my own life.

The Future Does Not Compute was one of those books whose end I was really sorry to reach. There was so much more I wanted to read about from this unique and stimulating perspective. NetFuture has filled that yearning. It provides the most consistently thoughtful, sober voice countering the hype of high technology that I have encountered. And there has been an additional benefit for me -- several of my high school computer technology students have taken to reading NetFuture and as a result their interests are beginning to move beyond merely discussing the latest, greatest gizmos on the market. It gives me hope.

I have been reading NetFuture since #53, and wish to say how much I now look forward to each new edition. I have been for some years now working in the management of Waldorf schools in Australia, and find your publication both highly confirming of the attempts many of us in this field are making to find truly human ways of working, and extremely stimulating in the quality and carefulness of the published thinking.

I earn my living in the computer industry and I'm not sorry I do, but I recognize that technologies change our modes of perception and consciousness as well as social and economic context and behavior. I think these are the most critical issues of the next century. I am drawn to NetFuture by both my curiousity and my desire to make choices I won't regret.

What a breath of fresh air you are.

Other comments

(From a reader:) "Thank you very much for your enlightening works! I spend much time reading and re-reading some issues of NetFuture and "The Future Does Not Compute", and it is for me something you might call 'a beginning of an awakening'. As a non-native English speaker, I know I most probably miss some of what you mean, still lots of subjects, which somehow were disturbing or questioning me, and for which I had only a glimpse of an answer, find in your works thoughtful explanations and in-depth argumentations which help me finding my own answers".

(From an emeritus professor of public and international affairs:) "Your netfuture commentaries have been one of the most literate, insightful, and helpful sources of information about current (and future) conditions of our society and technology and I am very grateful that you produce public service. The range and the depth of your analyses are profoundly important and I hope they will be available for many years to come. Thanks for your service (as they say to the exemplary public servants and soldiers among us)".

(From a depth psychologist:) "Surely NetFuture is the most important publication of our time in its critique of technology".

(From a university professor:) "Hope to use NetFuture as a research resource in the Technology and Society course I'll be teaching next term".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture has a range of functions for me -- part palliative, part stimulant, always much appreciated. Long may it continue!"

(From a reader:) "I cherish the work you do".

(From a volunatary donor:) "Always love the thoughts you give. Great value for the money".

(From an English earl:) "Keep on telling us to wake up!"

(From an IT support manager:) "Your newsletters have been a source of inspiration and awakening to the impact that science and technology has had in my own life both at work in the IT world and at home. In what seems a very chaotic and unidyllic world your ability to articulate and flesh out issues in an original and evocative manner is very inspiring. I hope your newsletter will continue".

(From a software programmer:) "When you started NF, I was a freshman at Georgia Tech in the Computer Science program, already pretty disillusioned and disconnected at that point, without really knowing or understanding why. Trying to figure that out has been an interesting journey. I wish I'd come across NetFuture when you first began; the procession of your ideas and essays closely mirrors my own thoughts and growth over the past few years; but I feel that if I'd come across it sooner perhaps I'd have made more of my life in the mean time".

(From a software engineer:) "I consider NetFuture to have been a great boost to my awareness of the dangers of a casual approach to technology. It is one of very few texts I regularly receive in electronic format which I find always merits my undivided attention".

(From a reader:) "Your book, The Future Does Not Compute, touched me deeply. You reframed trends in society that troubled me so I could see them more coherently. NetFuture continues to challenge. The discussion on mediated experiences were especially thought-provoking. I always look forward to reading the latest issue".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture has changed my life so much for the better".

(From a reader:) "Your NetFuture newsletter essays present such a sensible analysis of so much assumed to be unchanging truth. I thank you sincerely for them".

(From a reader:) "I enjoy NetFuture every time it comes through my inbox. Your passion and concern for technology, how we use it, and how it changes us and the world around us shines through in your writing and it's really a pleasure to read it".

(From a reader:) "I have been reading NetFuture since I can remember. Keep up the GREAT work. In my heart, I feel that it is desperately important and relevant".

(From a reader:) "I work with high-tech systems and appreciate what you do: making a technology-dependent society think. It is an almost impossible task, but you always seem undaunted. Keep up the good work".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for your work. I've toyed with the idea of suing you for my highlighter costs".

(From a reader:) "When library school dragged me onto the communications technology bandwagon in the mid-90s, my questions were all about how will this affect the way we think and work over the next few generations. You've been addressing those questions ever since. Thanks for keeping on".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for the good work. It is always thought provoking and has made me think long and hard about choices that I make in my life. Even more importantly it has made me acutely aware of those choices as they apply to my 19 month old".

(From a Jungian analyst:) "Thanks for that superb article, 'Intelligence and Its Artifacts'. I don't think there is anyone on the horizon who writes of these matters with such originality and depth. Please do keep NetFuture going".

(From a journalist and author:) "I've been on your email list for probably over five years. Always find your material fascinating, unique and important....Your newsletter is always a welcome 'beacon' in our increasingly broadcast oriented world".

(From an associate professor:) "Thanks so much for this latest issue. I teach English and I'm gearing up to teach three of my regular courses this fall [including] a first-year composition course on the theme of technology and society....Your piece has really stirred my thinking and enthusiasm about all three of these courses. I hope that I'll be able to engender in my students some of the awakening you envision".

(From a reader:) "You do a wonderful job. I had despaired of there being anyone who could speak meaningfully about technology in today's world -- until I found your writings".

(From a reader:) "Heartfelt thanks for your latest newsletter. Its clarity and courage carry widespread healing. Please carry on".

(From a reader:) "Although I have changed careers to become a hand bookbinder I spent 30 years in high tech and often forward your newsletter to scientists and politicians I know".

(From a reader:) "Issue #142 is a real gem. Thanks for continuing to write important stuff".

(From an art historian and author:) "Please keep up the excellent work in NetFuture -- I look forward to each issue, and am always stimulated by its focus....Keep writing, we're out here reading!"

(From a reader:) "Thanks for continuing NetFuture. It is a source of inspiration".

(From a reader:) "Please keep up the fine work you're doing. It's needed now more than ever".

(From a reader:) "You are a passionate writer -- the effort you exert to raise our consciousness never ceases to amaze me -- and in fact provides inspiration for me to apply myself as much as I can in my far less noble 'work'".

(From a reader:) "It's a pleasure receiving your newsletter, and I savor its content whether I agree or disagree. Either way, it always gets me thinking".

(From a reader:) "I'm very pleased to have discovered NetFuture; reading it has been an inspiration and encouragement to me and I've forwarded bits of it to several of my friends".

(From a reader:) "I enjoy the NetFuture newsletter very much -- so much that whenever it comes in the inbox, I smile, then set it aside as a treat, something to look forward to and re-read again and again. (It's the only email I re-read out of joy rather than confusion.)"

(From a reader:) "I have always appreciated those articles in which you sound the alarm, trash the latest tech fads, spar with Kevin Kelly, etc. But the articles of yours that I appreciate the most are the ones that provide ways to look beyond technology and those that explore real human potential. Those kinds of articles have introduced me to a lot of ideas and ways of thinking that I never would have encountered in the other magazines and books that I read".

(From a college professor:) "Many thanks for your wise and perceptive writing on technology in NetFuture. I direct all of the students in my online course on [technology and culture] to your writings. Some even 'get it.' :-) "

(From a web developer:) "Again, you have read my mind and this newsletter has fed an email debate between nine of us, that has interrupted our work day, but has generated some very good thinking! Now the trick [is] to parlay this debate off line and into our daily lives".

(From a college librarian:) "I like your newsletters. You write with clarity, passion and good sense".

(From a reader:) "Many thanks for NetFuture. It never fails to provoke a new train of thought, and your own writings never fail to trigger a chord of recognition. After years as an enthusiastic receiver of all that was new and shiny in technology, I have come to share the view that you put in a recent version of NetFuture; that new technology should be first viewed with suspicion and only accepted after careful assessment of what impact it will make on human lives".

(From the executive director of a major city's public library foundation:) "The importance of what you do is not, at least for me, the insight into technology, but how I can help to ethically apply these concepts to the work that I now do, which is really helping to bring a wonderful, but outdated library system into the current era. The people I work with are wanting to understand the role of information, and what really are the qualities of providing that information to the communities that they serve. I think your work has helped me enormously".

(From a reader:) "I learned of your fascinating work in an old New York Times story. Read it at a ripe moment, just as I finished reading Barzun's magnificent & prescient Science, the Glorious Entertainment (1964). Barzun was concerned that the science steamroller would flatten us before we had a chance to think about it and make some studied judgements -- and this well before the computer addled, frustrated, angered and fascinated most of us. Yours is a consuming theme but I fear few are listening. Carry on!"

(From an overseas reader:) "I have recommended the site to many of my friends and we discuss quite a lot about it....Normally the non-americans like us have a typical image of the US and its society. A materialistic image where the only thing that people care about is money. But when I saw this site I realised that the generalisation is not true. People do think differently even in America".

(From a senior editor at a bookseller/publisher:) "I have enjoyed your writings a lot, and NetFuture has proved indispensable in preparing for [a high-profile anthology of writings on the technnological future]".

(From a reader:) "I just can't tell you how I deeply I value your work. I've just come across it recently and your voice speaks articulately to my buddingly obscure hunches and intellectually fuzzy concepts".

(From a reader:) "Thank you. NetFuture is changing lives".

(From a reader:) "I thoroughly enjoy your newsletter. NetFuture is one of the few sites I read in its entirety. Thank you!"

(From a university professor:) "A few years ago I started a seminar class with my students with the assignment that they were to write to me, on paper, with a pen, about something real and significant that had happened to them directly (no mediated experiences). They were also to choose the pen and paper carefully. The result was wonderful and it set the tone for a great seminar. You do exactly the same thing for me every time you write one of your newsletters--make me take a step back from what I am doing, and think about it all more carefully. Thank you".

(From a Network Operations staffer at a media company:) "I've read NetFuture for quite some time, and often re-read each issue several times in the receiving week".

(From a reader:) "I really enjoy your work, and am provoked to think about many things I would normally pass over and take for granted by the NetFuture articles. I work at a major teaching hospital and medical center, in support of various clinical information systems. I am also a person with a 20+ year history with a chronic illness. Both of these things in my life compel me to consider the use and effects of technology very seriously".

(From a reader:) "Just wanted to say that reading NetFuture means a lot to me, you make me think about my relationship with technology, my relationship with people around me and where we are going vs. where we might not want to go. I think some of the things you say may apply to how I bring up my children!!"

(From a reader:) "I love NetFuture. I thank god for it every time it arrives in my inbox".

(From a staffer at the Exploratorium museum:) "You are deep".

(From an IT professional in Belgium:) "Your newsletter is a concrete proof that in the United States there are still thinkers, and not only more or less hip tinkerers".

(From a technical writer:) "NetFuture is what Wired should have been".

(From a student of the classics, English literature, and new media:) "Since subscribing to your newsletter I've been consistently impressed, but more than that, inspired to follow leads that have been opening doors to questions I have been pondering for a long time. Precisely because the net is dominated by voices singing the same old song ("buy buy buy! there are ten thousand things to try!"), we desperately need a voice -- jumping from one email box to another -- saying what you say. Some of us are thriving on it".

(From a senior lecturer in a university department of computer science in Ireland:) "Have you considered publishing NetFuture in book form? A compendium of all the issues to date, plus yearly updates would certainly find its way onto my bookshelf".

(From an anthropology student:) "NetFuture is the single most influential publication I read. Every issue affects my life in yet more surprising ways".

(From a senior software engineer:) "Reading you is like reading music. Your language and word usage, and the lyrical flow of your words are so pleasant to 'hear'. The development and clarity of your essays is so respectful of the reader that I almost always understand what you're saying. Thank you so much".

(From Purdue University:) "Every time I read a new NetFuture I feel a rush of gratitude for what you're sharing with all of us. If I kept a daily Gratitude Journal, your newsletter would be mentioned in it regularly".

(From Buenos Aires:) "NetFuture is the best!"

(From an electrical engineer:) "Your newsletter continues to inspire me".

(From Stanford University:) "Thanks for the thoughtful news and musings. I look forward to having to think every week or so".

(From University of Northern Colorado:) "Love your newsletter".

(From Southwest Missouri State University:) "Thanks for your time and for creating some of the more readable pieces of cyberspace".

(From a reader:) "I read each issue of NetFuture with great interest, and can honestly say your writing has changed how I view the world and technology".

(From a public lecturer:) "You provide a remarkable service, and I am very grateful for it".

(From a reader:) "I love NetFuture. Keep up the good work".

(From Oxford, England:) "For a long time I have been meaning to let you know how much I have been enjoying NetFuture. I can only say that your writings have had and are having a big influence on me. I could hardly call myself a "convert", more someone for whom you have managed to articulate with superb clarity things that had previously only been vaguely thought and felt".

(From the Whidbey Institute:) "I love your refusal to chug the bromides that our culture is serving up so mindlessly. It keeps me alert as well".

(From a reader:) "Your writing includes some of the most uplifting, human-centered material I have encountered short of the Indian sage Krishnamurti".

(From an Internet service provider:) "What a wonderful forum; keep it up!"

(From a computer engineer in Zimbabwe:) "Your NetFuture is great and I thoroughly enjoy reading each and every issue".

(From an IT professional in Belgium:) "Seldom have I enjoyed articles more than those appearing on this issue of NetFuture".

(From a software engineer at Texas Instruments:) "I have been a subscriber to NetFuture for several years, and I find it to be an example of the best of the net - a chance to read reasonable points of view that I haven't found in the 'real' world".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture gives me hope that there is intelligent life in the universe not to mention numerous sparkly quotes to inject into dull management meetings out here in my world where I whip together XML data and publish academic physics journal articles to the web... Thanks".

(From a reader:) "You provide a fantastic service which I enjoy reading. NetFuture is a vital part of my 'environmental scanning' in order to keep up-to-date with current news and trends".

(From the executive director of a social action group:) "I am embarassed to not have expressed my deep appreciation for NetFuture sooner. It has helped me immensely in understanding many of the issues facing us today".

(From a reader:) "Please change my email address....I don't want to miss any of your writings, which are extremely apt and thought provoking. Thank you!"

(From St. Louis University:) "Your newsletter....has always been among the 2-7% of digests and newsletters I receive in my e-mailbox that I really consider essential reading. It is one of the few online publications that consistently delivers something new and thought-provoking with every issue. That you manage to do it all yourself just amazes me".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for the mind-stretching and heart-stirring words in the newsletter".

(From University of Washington:) " Your magazine is such a tonic to the information insanity we are drowning in. Thank you (and your supporters) for keeping it alive!"

(From a reader:) "Thanks for the wonderful work. It is inspiring to see you tackling these issues, and with the courage to publish. So much so, that the sense that you are wholly correct on essentials, however the reader may sometimes quibble with details or tangential conclusions, seems to be an almost extraneous benefit -- one might say, a kind of grace".

(From a reader:) "Thank you very much for your penetrating eyes and willingness to share them".

(From Marshall University:) "You help me teach the best parts of my course here at Marshall University".

(From a columnist:) "I don't have the words right now for a full statement of my appreciation and admiration of your work in NetFuture. Like many of your subscribers, I receive hundreds messages weekly. But few of these messages give me the feeling that the sender is consciously working toward the same kind of personal and political peace with technology that I am. Your newsletter, of course, is a rousing exception".

(From Georgetown University:) "The content of the NetFuture newsletter, in my humble opinion, is some of the best material being written on the issues facing our society as we move into the 'digital revolution'".

(From New Zealand:) "Thank you so much for continuing to light a taper of sanity in a silicon-crazed globe of greed and abstraction. You really are making a difference".

(From the dean of a university School of Arts and Architecture:) "An excellent essay! Bravo".

(From Florida Gulf Coast University:) "Thanks for your time and efforts for putting together such a wonderful publication. Every issue of NetFuture that arrives in my inbox is an opportunity to pause and ask the tough questions of being human in a technological age".

(From the University of Alberta:) "Just wanted to let you know that I think your newsletter is brilliant".

(From a reader:) "I subscribe to NetFuture and find that your essays on the role, position, and effects of technology on our culture give voice to many of the issues that disturb me. And, it is rare if an essay does not present at least one observation that had not occurred to me".

(From a reader:) "It's amazing, Stephen, how much more poetic and thrilling to read are critiques of technophilia than the advocacy pieces authored by technophiles. Why is this?"

(From University of Washington:) "I like Steve Talbott's clear-headed way of approaching things. The rare individual who can combine vision with creative talent has something particularly special, that good writing alone cannot possibly match...and vision alone only touches with rarity. Steve, I think, has that combination".

(From a reader:) "Really appreciate your intelligent and thought-provoking writing. So much better than most of the pap or the absolutes that we read".

(From an anthropologist and journalist in Brazil:) "I am a voracious reader of NetFuture, and I really appreciate your work".

(From Ottawa:) "have been a subscriber to NetFuture for about a year now and really enjoy your writing and that of your guests: it's accessible, lucid, intelligent, critical without being driven by dogma or ideology. thank you for putting it together, and for keeping it free".

(From an IT manager at Rice University:) "I've been a subscriber to NetFuture for some time now. I've thoroughly enjoyed the thought provoking commentary offered there. It, and your book The Future Does Not Compute, offer a perspective and cautionary reflection on technology not found anywhere else".

(From the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research:) "Many thanks for the periodic welcome dose of rationality and sanity that NetFuture provides".

(From a reader:) "I am a fan of your newsletter, NetFuture, and am impressed by the depth of your views concerning technology and its implications, both in the present and in the future".

(From a reader:) "I'm a big fan of NetFuture and look forward to each issue, and especially to the opportunity it gives me to pause during the day and actually *think* about things for a moment".

(From University of Wisconsin:) "I find your work, your writing, and NetFuture absolutely necessary".

(From a university webmaster in Australia:) "Please allow me to take this opportunity to thank you for your efforts in producing the NetFuture newsletter. I look forward to each issue, and always find in it plenty of food for thought".

(From the National University of Ireland:) "I'm impressed to hear somebody emphasising the `responsibility' side of the freedom/responsibility equation. The trend today is just to talk about freedom and rights in a vacuum".

(From Marshall University:) "I look forward to reading NetFuture every other week, it's the only material I've found which contains `the hidden wisdom.'"

(From a reader:) "I just wanted to tell you how very happy I am to know your NetFuture has a future! This is so great. You reputation is growing all over the place".

(From a reader:) "I've been a long time reader of NetFuture and I know that my relationship to my machines has been changed from the challenging insights you share with your readers in each issue. I find that I'm now always evaluating what I do on the computer and how I do it; something I seldom did in the past".

(From SUNY - Potsdam:) "I really appreciate the work you do with NetFuture. You serve as a very important and rational voice rising out of the cacophony of corporate interest and mass marketing".

(From Monash University, Australia:) "Great work, please keep it up!"

(From a reader:) "Let me take this opportunity to thank you for NetFuture. As an Internet Engineer, I enjoy it very much and appreciate the issues you raise".

(From France:) "To read "NetFuture" is always a joy for the mind -- what I lack most in my actual job in bibliographic databases, where we have for a long time forgotten not only the aims of our job, but the human part of it too".

(From a reader:) "Thank you for writing your meditations on technology. I find them refreshing and insightful. Let me encourage you to keep up the good work/thought".

(From Cold Spring Harbor, New York:) "I am very pleased to be able to pass your newsletter on, in print form, to many friends and professional colleagues".

(From New York city:) "I find NetFuture inspiring, thought-provoking and wise. I'm glad to be able to contribute toward your work. Thank you for several years of wakeful, intelligent writings".

(From a reader:) "Just a brief fan note to let you know that the Thursday write up in the NY Times and my brief survey of the material on the main page lifted about 50% of my depression. I suspect that reading future issues (I just subscribed) will remove the other 50%. Congratulations on being blessed with a heart as well as a mind. Very rare these days.

(From Bellanet.org:) "Let me also take this opportunity to thank you for a great newsletter".

(From Harvard University:) "I've been a subscriber to NetFuture for a while, and I have to say that most of the opinions seen there are thought-provoking at their worst, and directly on-the-mark at their best. Thank you; it's worth reading every word of every one I receive".

(From a commercial website:) "We spend our computer lives worrying about privacy, viruses, and horrible, horrible programs from Microsoft. But these are not the real problems. The question is how that keyboard and screen and poorly constructed content is changing our lives in ways we can never picture. Stephen L. Talbott in the newsletter NetFuture looks at how our lives change in a digital world. He knows whereof he speaks".

(From a reader:) "Your newsletter was my greatest Find on the internet last year! I am constantly forwarding specific articles to friends around the country".

(From an Internet application developer:) "Thanks for providing such a stimulating forum about technology and society. I'm a huge fan".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture is one of the only mailings that I bother to read - yes, it's that good :)"

(From a reader:) "I love NetFuture; it's one of the few emailings that I receive that I keep to savor again".

(From a reader:) "[I] find NetFuture to be wonderful, the freshest air on the net".

(From a reader:) "I could go on and on about the many issues you have raised that have made me consider my own postion in a new light, but I will spare you. :-) Let me just say that I look forward to receiving every edition".

(From a reader:) "I'd like to thank you for your usual eloquence, and willingness to discuss complex topics. As a techie, I really enjoy your thought-provoking cautionary stories. Please continue to give voice to the issues we all should be thinking about".

(From the editor of a digital-age magazine:) "What an incredibly powerful set of writings this time. You are on a roll. Please don't stop".

(From a professor of art and architectural history:) "Keep up your good and important work on NetFuture".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture is wonderful".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for your great newsletter".

(From Bangkok:) "Thank you for the continuing stream of excellent material".

(From an educator in Germany:) "Thank you for your amazing newsletter -- it made my millennium!"

(From a reader:) "Just a note of thanks for your very fine newsletter. I find it consistently stimulating, substantive, and thought-provoking. A real change from much of what passes for information and commentary on the Net. Thank you".

(From a reader:) "I find your site the most thoughtful on the Internet".

(From a reader:) "NetFuture is the best thing on the Internet".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for your always interesting "NetFuture". Please keep up the good work!"

(From a reader:) "Just a quick note to say a BIG thanks for sending this excellent material out. I've been getting NetFuture for about 4 years and it's tops. An excellent antidote to the techno-hype".

(From Argentina:) "I am a curret visitor of your web page NetFuture, and have, in turn, forwarded to other educators that share an interest in the way we teach and protect our children. I have to say that is has been great support to us and enlightening in many senses. We very much appreciate the work you do".

(From a lawyer:) "I do love the toys of technology -- and marvel at how they change my life -- and worry at how they change my life. I haven't found anyone else looking at what is going on. When I say 'looking' it sounds so simple. Seeing is simple. Steve helps me see".

(From a reader:) "When an issue arrives, you have MADE MY DAY!"

(From an instructional psychologist:) "I love NetFuture and send it along to everyone I know".

(From a software engineer:) "I may not always agree with you, but I certainly am glad you're doing what you're doing -- keep it up!"

(From an author:) "This is not a comment. It is a statement of respect for you and your ideas approaching awe. I have been dealing with religio-philosophical problems all my life, and I am in my late 70's. I've read (and they tell me, written) some fine statements about life and death in the course of my work. I don't think I've ever read anything as intelligent, as brilliantly and delicately nuanced, as the material in NetFuture #110".

(From a reader:) "Thank you for your love, compassion and humanity, and for sharing it with us".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for the EXCELLENT work with this newsletter! I've only recently discovered it, and I'm in the process of reading thru back issues when I can".

(From a reader:) "Thanks for sending this excellent material out. The NetFutures are tops, and this issue (#111) especially immensely thought-provoking. As a parent, educator and sometime IT consultant, this confirms and challenges my lifestyle and methods. You're doing us all a great service".

(From the editor of an educational research journal:) "Thank you for your work on NetFuture. It is such a valuable resource".

(From a reader:) "I thoroughly enjoy reading everything you write, partly for the content which is invariably thought-provoking and compelling but also for your writing which is eloquent, literate and a joy to read".

(From a reader:) "Many thanks for NetFuture. Its perspective is a much needed counterweight to the glorification of technology in mainstream media".

(From a writer:) "Keep up the good work, and know that a great many people are better, clearer, more skeptical thinkers thanks to your efforts. No one can single-handedly straighten out a whole society's distorted thinking, but you're doing more toward that goal than you probably realize. Thanks".

(From a museum exhibit designer:) "I continue to look forward to reading every issue of NetFuture".

(From a web developer:) "I'm sure you hear this a lot, but with the incredible wealth (?) of stuff on the internet, I rarely find anything that feeds me as opposed to eats me. Your newsletter is one of the rare exceptions. The irony in this is a bit chilling: I make my living as a freelance web developer".

(From a graduate student:) "Thanks for your great work. I value your reasoned comments--no hype, no gloss. I also quite enjoy the simplicity of the website and emails".

(From a psychologist:) "I want to join all your other readers who have expressed their appreciation and admiration for your work with NetFuture. It is a precious resource of sanity -- and humanity -- in a time which seems devoid of both".

(From a computer science student:) "I just received my first issue of NetFuture (#113), and it was thought-provoking enough to make me go through your archives. I find your ideas (especially those concerning computers and education) both troubling and interesting -- I'm on my third year of college, majoring in computer science, and I never thought about it this way before. It appears I still don't ask 'Why?' often enough .... You've definitely given me much to think about. Thank you".

(From a reader:) "Not only do I find your responses and humane impulses completely convincing, but I'm always in awe at your ability to put the issues with such precise and moving power, saying what I would have liked to say".

(From a reader:) "You work is likely serving good purposes you know little about. I often forward your newsletters to others and I often receive them from colleagues who know that I'm working on technology / gender / social issues. I'll take this opportunity to thank you for your work, which I always find thoughtful and useful".

(From a reader:) "I think NetFuture, and your mind and heart, and those of the people you feature in NetFuture, are amazing and wonderful and ... of great benefit to all of us".

(From a reader:) "Yours is one of the few newsletters I read from end to end".

(From a reader:) "I find something in every issue to fuel my enthusiasm for the topic of technology and human responsibility".

(From a reader:) "When I disagree with an opinion expressed in NetFuture, it's always a challenge to articulate why. Keep up the good work".

(From a reader:) "When every popular journalist is deriding the stupidities of the Information Society, we will still be looking to NetFuture to nourish us with its humanity, its good sense and its hope for the future".

(From a reader:) "I am a Swedish engineering student who discovered NetFuture a few months ago. I can hardly describe the impact it has had on my view of the world since then. It is not often I encounter something that so brilliantly and powerfully challenges my thinking and gives me such hope for the future. It has given me much joy and sparked a mental revolution the like of which I haven't experienced before".

(From a wildlife rehabilitator:) "It's a wonderfully thought-provoking, extremely literate publication. It's obvious you put your heart and soul into it. Thanks!"

(From a reader:) "Keep up the great work with the newsletter. It is a wonderful service, literate, challenging, and provocative to the conscience and mind".

(From a top-ranked newspaper feature writer:) "Your site is absolutely first rate -- the best regular commentary on genetic modification available anywhere right now. There's no doubt in my mind that your site is having 'ripple effects' on opinion -- I can testify to the fact".

(From an English professor:) "I am wrapping up a book on the commercial invasion of education, one symptom of which is the over-promotion of e-learning. I have found NetFuture to be an invaluable resource, particularly your own writing".