It's hard to miss the similarity between your book's title and Cliff Stoll's 1995 Silicon Snake Oil, an indictment of the general concept of the "information superhighway" that was starting to resonate with the public. Stoll is a really smart guy, but that particular book hasn't held up too well:

   Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're 
   irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, 
   eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You 
   don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a 
   prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer
   or better life.

(excerpted from the Amazon summary at https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Informatio... ).

So, was this something that you guys were conscious of when you chose your own book's title? How well have you future-proofed your central thesis?

Clifford Stoll's writing should be required reading. He missed some of the technological leaps of the past 18 years that improved adoption (this was pre-pre-Bubble) but the many of the ideas of human contact do ring true today. I was very surprised when I read this the first time around. He elaborated more in Silicon Valley Snake Oil, also from 1995.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Snake_Oil

and

http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information...

This isn't that new of a concept. Parents have been lamenting kids being lazy (and too much time in front of the computer, though that's not really being lazy!) since the start of time.

Relevant to this discussion is Silicon Valley Snake Oil by Cliff Stoll. http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information...

In 1996 he predates a lot of these ideas by 15 years. And he's gone from physicist-hacker to Klein Bottle (Mobius bottle?) Maker. http://www.kleinbottle.com/