Clifford Stoll wrote this article to promote his book Silicon Snake Oil (released the same year), which is a 200+ page expansion on the same theme. So this wasn't just floating a thought bubble.

Silicon Snake Oil contains the same combination of short-sighted predictions (electronic financial transactions aren't viable, an online database can't replace the daily newspaper, no one wants an e-commerce bookstore) mixed with accurate observations about what makes online social interactions and other bits of electronic life awful.