nformation gathered for the 1990 to 1995
Elon University/Pew Internet Imagining the Internet
Predictions Database was a partial inspiration for the
formulation of the questions for the 2004 Experts
Survey. The 2004 questions were purposely constructed
in a many-layered manner to spur discussion, and while
they are rooted in some previous predictive statements
they do not represent the beliefs or research
conclusions of any of the researchers. This page offers
some background - a backstory of sorts - tied to the
2004 questions that helps put things in context. By 2014,
use of the internet will increase the size of
people's social networks far beyond what has
traditionally been the case. This will enhance trust in
society, as people have a wider range of sources from
which to discover and verify information about job
opportunities, personal services, common interests, and
products.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the general drift of the commentary skews in agreement
with this prediction on social networks. However, some
predictors saw problems with the potential for a
digital divide, overt commercialism and/or the evils
associated with life in a high-speed world to spoil
this dream. Here are a few selections:
- In his 1995 book "Democracy and
Technology," Richard Sclove writes: "One
function of democratic community is to provide a social
foundation for self-governance and individual political
empowerment. This suggests that community boundaries
ought normally to remain roughly contiguous with the
territorial boundaries defining formal political
accountability and agency. Yet the criterion of local
self-governance is breached if involvement in spatially
dispersed social networks grows to subvert a collective
capacity to govern the locales people physically
inhabit. And the criterion of egalitarian empowerment
is breached if coveys of technorich cronies are
empowered to telelobby senators, while technopoor
neighbors are excluded from the circuit."
- In a 1995 online essay, Justin Hall makes the
following statement: "I encourage all my friends
in the commercial sector to be generous, and trust that
their product is worth talking about. Leave the
channels open for people to do so. Otherwise, the
Internet will accelerate the self-loathing and
dissatisfaction that comes with advertising's
endless call for immediate gratification. Identified by
and targeted for our product consumption, we will find
ourselves receiving more personalized mail from
products than from people. They will know us, and they
will manipulate us. We will end up hating the Internet,
and ourselves."
- In a 1995 article for The Nation, adapted from his
book "Rebels Against the Future: The Luddites and
Their War on the Industrial Revolution,"
Kirkpatrick Sale urges people to step back and question
technology: "This transformation is, without
anyone being prepared for it, overwhelming the
communities and institutions and customs that once were
the familiar stanchions of our lives ... No wonder
there are some people who are Just Saying No. They have
a great variety of stances and tactics, but the
technophobes and technoresisters out there are
increasingly coming together under the banner that
dates to those attackers of technology of two centuries
ago, the Luddites ... These would include those several
million people in all the industrial nations whose jobs
have simply been automated out from under them or have
been sent overseas as part of the multinationals'
global network, itself built on high-tech
communications ... They may include, too, quite a
number of those whose experience with high technology
in the home or office has left them confused or
demeaned, or frustrated by machines too complex to
understand, much less to repair, or assaulted and
angered by systems that deftly invade their privacy, or
deny them credit, or turn them into ciphers. Whereever
... neo-Luddites may be found, they are attempting to
bear witness to the secret little truth that lies at
the heart of modern experience: Whatever its presumed
benefits, of speed, or ease, or power, or wealth,
industrial technology comes at a price, and in the
contemporary world that price is ever rising and ever
threatening."
At least one devastating attack will occur in the next
10 years on the networked information infrastructure or
the country's power grid.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary skews in agreement with the prediction
that malicious attacks could be launched on the system.
Individuals who discounteded the likelihood of attacks
tended to be people who spoke out against government
regulation (through key-escrow encryption, etc.) that
could take away civil liberties. Here are a few
examples:
- In a 1995 article for The New York Times, John
Markoff talks with Eric Schmidt, chief technology
officer for Sun Microsystems, regarding computer
viruses. Markoff writes: "'I think [viruses]
will be an extraodinarily serious problem over the next
few years,' said Eric Schmidt, chief technical
officer at Sun Microsystems Inc. 'If you believe
the theory that nearly all personal computers will be
on corporate networks or online services in the next
two or three years, then this is a problem that could
touch all PC users worldwide ... There are criminals in
the world, and some of them are programmers. With
computer networks, they have an amplifying effect that
they've never had before. If I were a criminal with
a gun, I might attack one person. But with a computer
network, I can attack a million people at a time.
It's like an atomic bomb.'"
- In their 1994 book "Firewalls and Internet
Security," Steven Bellovin and William Cheswick
write: "The advent of mobile computing will also
stress traditional security architectures. We see this
today, to some extent, with the need to pass X11
through the firewall. It will be more important in the
future. How does one create a firewall that can protect
a portable computer, one that talks to its home network
via a public IP network? Certainly, all communication
can be encrypted, but how is the portable machine
itself to be protected from network-based attacks? What
services must it offer, in order to function as a
mobile host? What about interactions with local
facilities, such as printers or disk space? The face of
the network security problem will certainly change over
the years. But we?re certain of one thing: it won?t go
away."
- In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Peter
Schwartz, co-founder and president of Global Business
Network and author of "The Art of the Long
View," interviews Andrew Marshall, a national
security researcher/consultant whose work included
stints at the RAND think tank in 1949 and 22 years at
the Pentagon, under six presidents. Schwartz quotes
Marshall saying: "There may well be an increase in
guerrilla warfare because new technologies may increase
our vulnerability to it. We are living in the
equivalent of the early 1920s, when tanks, airplanes,
and later radar and radio were new, and people
weren't sure what they were or how to use them. We
have only preliminary ideas about how today's
technology is going to change warfare. But it will. In
the old world, if I wanted to attack something
physical, there was one way to get there. You could put
guards and guns around it, you could protect it. But a
database - or a control system - usually has multiple
pathways, unpredictable routes to it, and seems
intrinsically impossible to protect. That's why
most efforts at computer security have been
defeated."
In 2014, it will still be the case that the vast
majority of internet users will easily be able to copy
and distribute digital products freely through
anonymous peer-to-peer networks.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary skews in agreement with the prediction
on freedom to copy digital products. Kelly, Dyson and
Barlow were the big names speaking out on this topic,
but there were others. Here are a few:
- In an article she wrote in 1995 for Wired magazine,
Esther Dyson comments on intellectual property rights
in the future on the Internet: "In the new
communities of the Net, the intrinsic value of content
generally will remain high, but most individual items
will have a short commercial half-life. Creators will
have to fight to attract attention and get paid.
Creativity will proliferate, but quality will be scarce
and hard to recognize. The problem for providers of
intellectual property in the future is this: Although
under law they will be able to control the pricing of
their own products, they will operate in an
increasingly competitive marketplace where much of the
intellectual property is distributed free and suppliers
explode in number."
- In a 1994 article he wrote for newspaper The
Guardian of London, Wired magazine editor Kevin Kelly
says: "Let the copies breed. Whatever it is that
we are constructing by connecting everything to
everything, we know the big thing will copy
effortlessly. The I-way is a gigantic copy machine. It
is a law of the digital realm: anything digital will be
copied, and anything copied once will fill the
universe. Further, every effort to restrict copying is
doomed to failure ... Controlling copies is futile.
This presents a problem for all holders of intellectual
property who adhere to the notion of copyright - such
as Hollywood moguls and authors. Copyright law as we
know it will be dead in 50 years. A legal system that
shifts the focus from the 'copy' to the
'use' must take its place, letting copies
proliferate, and tracking only how and when an item is
used. Copy this article, please!"
- In a 1993 article for Internet World, Mike Godwin,
chief counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
outlines issues in regard to law and the Internet.
Godwin writes: "The law of intellectual property,
which includes the law of copyright, will have to adapt
to a world in which advances in technology increasingly
undercut one's ability to enforce
intellectual-property rights. Only now has it become
clear the extent to which copyright law has depended on
the 'bottleneck' created by the costs of
printing (and, later, of photocopying). As of today, it
remains far easier simply to buy the magazine
containing a short story than it is to photocopy that
story, or to have a copy printed by a printshop at your
own expense. But ... the costs of reproducing all sorts
of intellectual property are falling rapidly ... It has
been argued that the current copyright regime could be
replaced by one based on usage fees, but that
suggestion overlooks a couple of important obstacles.
First of all, once someone acquires information from an
online publisher, there's little disincentive to
spread that information around. (Why should you call up
Nexis, for example, when I did a similar search last
week and can forward my search results to you in
e-mail?) The second problem is that both the Internet
and the proposed infrastructural schemes that could
replace it are highly decentralized. This
decentralization of the Net makes billing for and
tracking use of intellectual property very difficult
... I have long believed that, when a law's
requirements are so unrealistic that they are routinely
broken by otherwise law-abiding citizens, it's a
sign that the law needs to be changed."
- In 1994, John Perry Barlow wrote an article for
Wired that he described as, "a framework for
rethinking patents and copyrights in the Digital
Age." In this section,"Information is a Life
Form," Barlow looks at how information changes and
how difficult it is to copyright this evolving form:
"Our system of copyright makes no accommodation
whatever for expressions which don't become fixed
at some point, nor for cultural expressions which lack
a specific author or inventor. Jazz improvisations,
stand-up comedy routines, mime performances, developing
monologues, and unrecorded broadcast transmissions all
lack the Constitutional requirement of fixation as a
'writing.' Without being fixed by a point of
publication, the liquid works of the future will all
look more like these continuously adapting and changing
forms, and will therefore exist beyond the reach of
copyright... Soon most information will be generated
collaboratively by the cyber-tribal hunter-gatherers of
cyberspace. Our arrogant dismissal of the rights of
'primitives' will soon return to haunt
us."
- In a 1994 article for The Toronto Sun, Scott Magnish
talks with Lance Hoffman about law on the Internet.
Magnish writes: "The concept of
'copyrighting' could be lost on the information
highway as the world moves closer to the free flow of
information, U.S. experts said ... 'Does copyright
have a chance?' Hoffman asked rhetorically.
'I'm increasingly leery of the pressure. The
economic pressures and even some of the social
pressures are such that it may not. Maybe the whole
nature of intellectual property has to be
reexamined.'"
- In a 1995 report from a joint hearing of the House
and Senate Judiciary committees Courts and Intellectual
Property subcommittees, testimony from Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vermont) includes the following statement:
"We must update our copyright laws to protect the
intellectual property rights of creative works
available online. The future growth of computer
networks, like the Internet, and of digital, electronic
communications require it. Otherwise, owners of
intellectual property will be unwilling to put their
material online. If there is no content worth reading
online, the growth of this medium will be stifled, and
public accessibility will be retarded."
Civic involvement will increase substantially in the
next 10 years, thanks to ever-growing use of the
internet. That would include membership in groups of
all kinds, including professional, social, sports,
political and religious organizations - and perhaps
even bowling leagues.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95), the
general drift of the commentary skews in agreement with
the prediction, but there were plenty of people
concerned that online involvement would cause problems,
including a reduction in important human-to-human
interaction. The predictions were grouped under the
subtopic of "virtual communities." Here are a
few:
- In a 1993 article he wrote for Newsweek magazine,
Howard Rheingold says: "If we don't lose the
freedom to speak as we choose, and if the price of
access doesn't restrict virtual communities to the
wealthy, we have the opportunity to build a grassroots
electronic democracy. But first we have to understand
the nature of the medium, its pitfalls as well as its
benefits. Virtual communities are not utopias ... There
are dark sides, just as every technology cast cultural
shadows. Electronic bulletin-board systems can bring
people together, but the computer screen can be a way
of controlling relationships, keeping people at a
distance. Words on a screen help people communicate
without the usual barriers of prejudice based on
appearance. That same distancing of real-life identity
and online persona can lead to cybercads and charlatans
who use the medium to swindle others. People are cruel
and rude to each other in real communities - and human
nature doesn't change because the community is
mediated by a computer screen. Computer-mediated
communications are particularly susceptible to
deception ... Every new communication technology -
including the telephone - brings people together in new
ways and distances them in others. If we are to make
good decisions as a society about a powerful new
communition medium, we must not fail to look at the
human element."
- In a 1995 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about
Carnegie Mellon University's HomeNet Project - a
three-year study of how 50 families were using the
Internet - Steve Creedy quotes Robert Kraut, a
professor of social psychology and human-computer
interaction who was involved in the study: "Will
the Internet expand people's parochialism by
leading them to a wider range of people with the same
interests, or will it encourage them to expand their
interests to new areas? There are hints of both, but
the jury's still out, according to Kraut. 'It
makes it more efficient to be parochial, but at the
same time it gets you to come across people and
interests that you wouldn't have simply by being in
your small location with your previous identity,'
he says. 'We're seeing both things happening,
and we don't know which is going to be
dominant'"
- In a 1994 article for Time Magazine, Philip
Elmer-Dewitt writes about conflicting views about the
development and uses of the Internet: "Now, just
when it seems almost ready for prime time, the Net is
being buffeted by forces that threaten to destroy the
very qualities that fueled its growth. It's being
pulled from all sides: by commercial interests eager to
make money on it, by veteran users who want to protect
it, by pornographers who want to exploit its freedoms,
by parents and teachers who want to make it a safe and
useful place for kids ... The danger, if this trend
continues, is that people will withdraw within their
walled communities and never again venture into the
Internet's public spaces. It's a process
similar to the one that created the suburbs and
replaced the great cities with shopping malls and urban
sprawl. The magic of the Net is that it thrusts people
together in a strange, new world, one in which they get
to rub virtual shoulders with characters they might
otherwise never meet. The challenge for the citizens of
cyberspace - as the battles to control the Internet are
joined and waged - will be to carve out safe, pleasant
places to work, play and raise their kids without
losing touch with the freewheeling, untamable soul that
attracted them to the Net in the first
place."
- In his 1995 book "Democracy and
Technology," Richard Sclove writes:
"Contemporary technological reporting is rife with
notions of electronic communities in which people
interact across regions or entire continents. Could
such 'virtual communities' eventually replace
geographically localized social relations? There are
reasons to suspect that, as the foundation for a
democratic society, virtual communities will remain
seriously deficient. If the prospect of a telecommunity
replacing spatially localized community ought to evoke
skepticism or opposition, one can nevertheless remain
open to the possibility of democratically managing the
evolution of telecommunications systems in ways that
instead supplement more traditional forms of democratic
community. Caution is in order. However, the benefits
of telecommunities can potentially include combatting
local parochialism; helping to establish individual
memberships in a diverse range of communities,
associations, and social movements; empowering isolated
or marginalized groups; and facilitating transcommunity
and intersocietal understanding, coordination, and
accountability. Systems designed to support such uses -
especially without subverting local community - are
unlikely to emerge without concerted democratic
struggle."
- Kimberly Rose made the following statement in a
research presentation at INET '95, the Internet
Society's 1995 International Networking Conference.
She was a researcher with Apple Computer's Advanced
Technology Group. She also worked with a consortium of
schools in Southern California to develop collaborative
dynamic curricula utilizing a wide-area
telecommunications network. Rose remarks: "The
potential the Web offers to build virtual communities
is tremendous. Large and complex problems which concern
us are now not only up to individuals to solve. By
means of global networking on the Internet special
interest groups and clubs are being formed. These
groups can break down large issues into smaller ones
and collaborate to solve problems."
- Christopher Scheer wrote the following in an essay
for The Nation: "Take the future world of
right-wing visionary George Gilder - please. Listening
to Gilder, one might get the impression that the only
thing keeping us from being happy is all these other
people: If we could only live 'virtually,'
we'd be safe from all the bad stuff out there and
stimulated by all the good. His future is sort of an
intellectual's version of the survivalist dream:
Leave the now-irrelevant cities, hole up in your
crime-free Utah faux ranch with your wall-size
interactive TV and call up the world of high culture in
Sensurround sound ... I'm the goddamn wannabe
Luddite who wonders what America will look like if
every rich person has a sprawling compound in some
gloriously beautiful - and ecologically fragile - state
like Utah while cities are abandoned to the poor. And
yet, I'm actually living the 'electronic
cottage' dream of the Gilders, Gingriches and
Tofflers. I'm turning on, logging in and crashing
out here in my own little nest. I'm a
'prosumer' in the infoweb, absorbing great gobs
of data and disgorging a little of my own every day ...
I'm human, a social animal. I'm not a god,
I'm a hairless chimp with a messianic complex and a
mouse. I need human contact and simple pleasures. I
need to eat, poop and see people smile. I need some
sun, some rain and the pleasures of someday holding the
tiny paw of my own child. But instead of returning to
the basics, I, like many of us, am spending more and
more of my time with my face bathed in monitorglow,
getting my fix of digital junk. Won't someone
please unwire me before it's too late?"
As computing devices become embedded in everything
from clothes to appliances to cars to phones, these
networked devices will allow greater surveillance by
governments and businesses. By 2014, there will be
increasing numbers of arrests based on this kind of
surveillance by democratic governments as well as by
authoritarian regimes.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary skews in agreement with the prediction
on the rise in tracking by governments and business,
and many activists were deeply concerned. In the
database, the keyword "surveillance" conjures
up dozens of hits. Among them are:
- In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, John Whalen
does a bit of surveillance at the American Society for
Industrial Security's annual convention, and quotes
Roy Want, an inventor of 'active badges' and a
scientist at Xerox PARC. Whalen writes: "Roy Want
hails from England, the former empire that gave the
world Jeremy Bentham, philosopher of utilitarianism and
author of Panopticon, or 'The Inspection
House.' Published in 1791, Bentham's treatise
described a polygonal prison workhouse that placed the
penal/industrial overseers in a central tower with
glass-walled cells radiating outward. Mirrors placed
around the central tower allowed the guards to peer
into each cell while remaining invisible to the
prisoners ... More than 200 years later, Want, a
computer engineer, has essentially reinvented the
Panopticon. More accurately, his brainchild, known as
the 'Active Badge,' would have made Bentham
proud ... Clipped to a shirt pocket or belt and powered
by a lithium battery, the black box emits an infrared
signal - just like a TV remote - every 15 seconds.
Throughout the computer lab at the PARC, infrared
detectors are velcro-mounted to the ceiling and
networked into a Sun workstation ... While privacy
tribunes see active badges as an ominous new
development in the brave new workplace, Want and his
colleagues see them as 'a double-edged sword,'
with the potential for both benign and malignant uses
... Want sees the tabs getting thinner and lighter.
Each of us would have dozens scattered around the
office, in the car, and at home. Detector 'cells
will start appearing in public places or the home,'
he says. 'The device will tell you where you are,
wherever you are.' Of course, it might also tell
them where you are .... 'There are always these
trade-offs between what's useful and what could be
done to us,' says Want from the belly of the
kinder, gentler Panopticon. 'The benefits to be had
are so great; we just have to be sure that the people
who are in control respect our
privacy.'"
- In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated
Communication magazine, Stephen Doheny-Farina, a
professor of technical communication at Clarkson
University, writes: "Active badges should scare
the daylights out of anyone. When it comes to
connectivity, the employer must justify the
surveillance. Everyone must assume that only
extraordinary conditions merit surveillance. The
requisite argument must not be, 'Why do you not
want to wear the badge?' The requisite argument
must be 'Why do you want me to wear it?' We
must demand that the burden of proof is on the watcher,
not the watched."
- In his 1994 book "City of Bits," MIT
computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes:
"Life in cyberspace generates electronic trails as
inevitably as soft ground retains footprints; that, in
itself, is not the worrisome thing. But where will
digital information about your contacts and activities
reside? Who will have access to it and under what
circumstances? Will information of different kinds be
kept separately, or will there be ways to assemble it
electronically to create close and detailed pictures of
your life? These are the questions that we will face
with increasing urgency as we shift more and more of
our daily activities into the digital, electronic
sphere. Contention about the limits of privacy and
surveillance is not new, but the terms and stakes of
the central questions are rapidly being redefined.
Isolated hermits can keep to themselves and don't
have to keep up appearances, but city dwellers have
always had to accept that they will see and be seen. In
return for the benefits of urban life, they tolerate
some level of visibility and some possibility of
surveillance - some erosion of their privacy.
Architecture, laws, and customs maintain and represent
whatever balance has been struck. As we construct and
inhabit cyberspace communities, we will have to make
and maintain similar bargains - though they will be
embodied in software structures and electronic access
controls rather than in architectural arrangements. And
we had better get them right; since electronic data
collection and digital collation techniques are so much
more powerful than any that could be deployed in the
past, they provide the means to create the ultimate
Foucaultian dystopia."
- In his 1992 book "Privacy for Sale,"
Jeffrey Rothfeder writes: "In time, high-tech
snooping and databanking could make earlier-generation
activities seem naively old-fashioned, as innocent as
child's play. When that occurs, our failure to
legislate controls over surveillance equipment as they
evolved - already a problem today - could overwhelm us,
as could our failure to prescribe adequate civil and
criminal penalties for abuses of individual privacy
committed by government agencies and U.S.
corporations."
- Jim Warren made the following statement in reaction
to the fast-track passage of H.R. 4922 the
"Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement
Act" (called by some the "digital telephony
bill" and labeled by its opponents as the
"FBI's wire-tap bill") which provided
rules for the "interception of digital and other
communications," in 1994. The law directed that
all telecommunications companies make their networks
tappable withing in the next four years. The intent of
the legislation, passed by the Senate and signed by
President Clinton, was to aid law enforcement, but it
included the phrase "and other lawful
authorization," raising privacy questions.
"How many tens of thousands of ... [officials]
will have authorized access to this pervasive
surveillance power? How many thousands of political
appointees control those agencies - and are controlled
by incumbent politicians? How many hick sheriffs or
local party bosses or nosy night staff are likely to
make unauthorized use of this Congressionally mandated
snoop-n-peep technology against boy - and girlfriends,
family members, personal enemies, business competitors,
and - most dangerously - political
opponents?"
Enabled by information technologies, the pace of
learning in the next decade will increasingly be set by
student choices. In ten years, most students will spend
at least part of their "school days" in
virtual classes, grouped online with others who share
their interests, mastery, and
skills.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary was enthusiastic about positive changes,
as people projected the internet to be a tremendous
step forward in education. But they also warned that
the new tool had to be seen in a different light,
rather than just being swallowed up by the old system.
Nearly 200 of the predictions in the database fall
under the education/schools category. Here are a
few:
- In a 1993 Wired magazine interview with Connie
Guglielmo about his election to the Colorado State
Board of Education, Ed Lyell discusses his vision of
the future of computers and education. Guglielmo
writes: "In Ed Lyell's hopeful vision of the
near future, by age 18 everyone in this country is
literate, semi-skilled and as comfortable using
computers and telecommunications technology as they are
using pencils. The main thing clouding that vision is
the current educational system. 'Children are born
learning machines,' says the Denver resident.
'... But if you had a school out there today to
teach children to walk, one-third of the population
would not be walking ... It would be easier to get the
Pope to become a Buddhist than to get the schools to
change.' Lyell has plans for an educational system
where students are treated as individuals with
differing interests and learning skills. He hopes to
build interactive learning devices that students can
peruse at their own pace and that present information
in a variety of ways. These computer-based learning
systems are part of a concept he calls
'Just-in-Time Learning.' 'It's
analogous to just-in-time manufacturing, which holds
that efficiency comes when things happen just at the
right time, when you have all the proper resources in
place,' says Lyell. 'In the case of education,
it means a student is able to log onto a computer to
learn about whatever he or she is interested in
learning about at that particular point in time.'
... 'I think we should have learning centers,
neighborhood electronic cottages,' Lyell
says.
- Kimberly Rose made the following statement in a
research presentation at INET '95, the Internet
Society's 1995 International Networking Conference.
Rose worked with a consortium of schools in Southern
California to develop collaborative dynamic curricula
using a wide-area telecommunications network: "We
must be careful not to look to this technology with
hopes that it will be the next band aid for education.
Installing computers, software, networking hardware,
telephone lines and cabling in our schools will not
change the way our children think unless we use these
tools in new ways which take advantage of the
possibilities the new tools have to offer. It is more
likely that these new technologies will be used in ways
which just mimic the old media and therefore not gain
us any new insights into creating better learning
environments."
- In a 1993 article he wrote for Wired magazine,
Seymour Papert remarks: "In the past, education
adapted the mind to a very restricted set of available
media; in the future, it will adapt media to serve the
needs and tastes of each individual mind ? Demoting
reading from its privileged position in the school
curriculum is only one of many consequences of
Knowledge Machines ... What follows from imagining a
Knowledge Machine is a certainty that school will
either change very radically or simply collapse. It is
predictable that the education establishment cannot see
farther than using new technologies to do what it has
always done in the past, teach the same curriculum ...
The possibility of freely exploring worlds of knowledge
calls into question the very idea of an administered
curriculum."
- In a 1991 article for The Whole Earth Review, a
quarterly magazine of access to tools and ideas, Roger
Karraker discusses the Internet, quoting George Gilder.
Karraker writes: "What would a real Network Nation
be like? Conservative theorist/author George Gilder ...
foresees a renaissance in education ... 'The
telecomputer could revitalize public education by
bringing the best teachers in the country to classrooms
everywhere,' Gilder says. 'More important, the
telecomputer could encourage competition because it
could make home schooling both feasible and attractive.
To learn social skills, neighborhood children could
gather in micro-schools run by parents, churches or
other local institutions. The competition of home
schooling would either destroy the public school system
or force it to become competitive with rival
systems.'"
- Craig Lyndes was a teacher from Champlain Valley
Union High School in Vermont who was a representative
of his school in its membership in the National School
Network Testbed (NSNT), funded by the National Science
Foundation to encourage the effective promulgation of
the Internet in education. This statement was quoted in
a research presentation made by Beverly Hunter, a NSNT
official, at INET '95, the Internet Society's
1995 International Networking Conference. Lyndes
reports: "Eventually we want to allow the students
to access all of the school's resources from home.
This is part of our long-range goal to blow the walls
off the school, bring the world into the school, and
put the school out in the world."
- In a 1993 article for The Christian Science Monitor,
Romolo Gondolfo interviews Perelman, senior researcher
at the Discovery Institute in Washington, D.C.
Gondolofo quotes Perelman saying: "All
bureaucracies, as we know, are rooted in the idea of
controlling people's access to knowledge by
concentrating it at the top and distributing it very
parimoniously to those at lower levels. But this is
precisely what is becoming more and more difficult to
do in this new Age of Knowledge which we are right now
entering ... A fundamental implication of this
revolution is that the creation and transmission of
knowledge will no longer move vertically, from the top
down. It will move horizontally, among many people, at
a tremendous speed. This will undermine the foundation
of every bureaucracy, including schools ? I propose to
abolish all public grants for schools and colleges and
instead give the money directly to families in the form
of 'micro-vouchers' to be spent on anything
that nurtures the spirit and teaches new
skills."
- In his 1995 book "Silicon Snake Oil,"
writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the
Internet's future implications for education:
"All of us want children to experience warmth,
human interaction, the thrill of discovery, and solid
grounding in essentials: reading, getting along with
others, training in civic values. Only a teacher, live
in the classroom, can bring about this inspiration.
This can't happen over a speaker, a television or a
computer screen. Yet everywhere I hear parents and
principals clamoring for interactive computer
instruction. What is wrong with this picture? ... At
the same time that school librarians, art instructors,
and music teachers are being fired, we're spending
thousands on computers. What's wrong with this
picture? ... 'I believe that the motion picture is
destined to revolutionize our educational system and
that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not
entirely, the use of textbooks.' - Thomas Edison,
1922. In the past, schools tried instructional
filmstrips, movies and television; some are still in
use, but think of your own experience: Name three
multimedia programs that actually inspired you. Now
name three teachers that made a difference in your
life."
By 2014, network security concerns will be solved and
more than half of American votes will be cast online,
resulting in increased voter
turnout.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95), the
general drift of the commentary splits in regard to
this prediction when considering the concept of network
security. Many people of the 1990s said security is not
possible; some believed that a secure system would
eventually be built; some said that a foolproof, secure
system would ensure so much privacy that it would put
the world?s societies at the mercy of criminals and
terrorists, shielding them from law enforcement; and
some said that perfect encryption would make it
impossible for governments to collect taxes. Here is a
sample:
- In an interview for InfoWorld in 1994, Jayne Levin,
editor of The Internet Letter, asks Daniel C. Lynch,
"How can companies best protect their networks
from intruders?" Lynch replies: "Ah, yes.
Security. Networking. Let's see: secrecy and
sharing. All together. Seems kinda contradictory.
Network security will remain the hardest nut to crack
(bad pun) for many years to come. Why? Because security
itself is a perpetual problem. As long as we have
humans around, anyway. The Internet was created without
much security included. We relied on the security of
the individual operating systems residing on the hosts
that were connected to the Internet. Then along came
PCs and Macs. No concept of security was built into
them? Many vendors and researchers are working on ways
to extend the firewall concept to full-function
Internetworking. They will not be done
tomorrow."
- In their 1994 book "Firewalls and Internet
Security," Steven Bellovin and William Cheswick
write: "It might seem that we are unduly
pessimistic about the state of computer security. This
is half-true: we are pessimistic, but not, we think,
unduly so. Nothing in the recent history of either
network security or software engineering gives us any
reason to believe otherwise. Nor are we alone in
feeling this way."
- In a 1994 article about digital democracy for Wired
magazine, Evan I. Schwartz writes: "The very
thought of living in an electronic democracy raises
fundamental issues ... Won't it be harder than ever
for Congress and the President to stand up for
what's right, rather than what's popular? Can
voter privacy be maintained, or will marketers get hold
of everyone's voting records? Will everyone have
access to the latest technology? Will the people really
be getting their say, or will the whole process by
controlled by moguls like Malone? And perhaps most
important, what would happen if votes somehow became
binding, rather than just advisory?"
- In a 1995 essay for Newsweek magazine, Jonathan
Alter quotes Neil Postman. Alter writes: "Although
the technology already exists for a full-scale
teledemocracy, no one has yet figured out a way to
guarantee the integrity of the balloting. In fact, even
computerized voting at polling places remains
surprisingly suspect. 'The opportunities for
rigging elections [are] child's play for vendors
and knowledgeable election officials,' writes Peter
G. Neumann in 'Computer-Related Risks.'
(Neumann runs the Internet newsgroup The Risks Forum.)
Short-term technical problems - like the disastous
pileup last November in Canada when the Liberal Party
tried a teleconvention with delegates voting from home
by phone - can be fixed. But the larger problem of
essentially turning over vote-counting to unaccountable
computer experts will be unresolved for years. At least
when Boss Tweed stole votes, everyone knew it. Computer
vote fraud can be extraodinarily difficult to
trace."
- In his 1994 book "City of Bits," MIT
computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes: "As
telecommunications networks have developed, there has
been growing flirtation with the idea of replacing
old-fashioned voting booths and ballot boxes with
electronic polling. In a cyberspace election, you might
find the policies of candidates posted online, you
might use your personal computer to go to a virtual
polling place to cast your vote, and the votes might be
tallied automatically in real time ... There are, of
course, potential problems with electronic stuffing of
ballot boxes, but these can be handled through password
control of access to the virtual ballot box or (better)
through use of encryption technology to verify a
voter's identity ... Electronic feedback can even
be swift enough, potentially, to support real-time (or
at least very fast) direct democracy on a large scale.
Populist demagogues like Ross Perot have proffered
visions of sitting in front of your two-way television,
watching debates, and bypassing the politicians by
immediately, electronically recording your response.
The network presents the packaged alternatives. Vote
with your remote! "
- In his 1995 book "Silicon Snake Oil,"
writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the
Internet's future implications: "The myth
holds that our networks are the ultimate in democracy -
all voices can be heard. Bytes have no race, gender,
age, or religion. What effects will we see when the
government comes online? Computer access will let us
send messages to government officials, and get quick
responses from them. We'll know what's
happening in the back rooms of our legislatures. We
could read committees' reports the same day
they're written and get fast responses to our
queries. The myth grows: Elections will change, too.
Politicians will be available through electronic
forums, with less emphasis on expensive television ads.
They'll upload position papers to the net, and
reply to e-mail from their constituents. Eventually,
we'll see electronic voting - a way to further
democratic participation, with polls giving
near-instant feedback for representatives. The reality?
Anyone can post messages to the Net. Practically
everyone does. The resulting cacaphony drowns out
serious discussion. Online debates of tough issues are
often polarized by messages taking extreme positions.
It's a great medium for trivia and hobbies, but not
the place for reasoned, reflective
judgment."
- In an interview that aired on PBS-TV in 1995,
Internet pioneer Stewart Brand said: "If total
public cryptography and lots of financial transactions
come to the Net, will you pay taxes in the future? You
won't. This is one terrifying fantasy from the
government standpoint. It may not be a fantasy, because
if lots of transactions go onto the Net and they're
completely encrypted in a way that they can't be
tracked, a whole lot of financial activity basically
goes black, goes underground. And then you can't
tax transactions, you can't track transactions. All
you've got left to tax basically is possessions at
that point and so you may see ... property taxes going
up and sales taxes disappearing."
By 2014, as telework and home-schooling expand, the
boundaries between work and leisure will diminish
significantly. This will sharply alter everyday family
dynamics.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the general drift of the commentary skewed in agreement
with the prediction. While rosy statements were made at
the time about the abundant choices to be made by
families in a world of telecommuting and home
schooling, there were also notes of caution sounded
about the impact of networked life in the home. Here
are a few:
- In a 1995 article for The Guardian in London,
Christopher Reed quotes Wired magazine editor/publisher
Louis Rossetto. Reed writes: "What Wired is doing,
in the words of co-founder and editor/publisher Louis
Rossetto, is launching the 'digital
revolution,' the 'creation and implementation
of new electronic technology, what it means to our
lives, and how it will change everything: business,
politics, culture, education, art and personal
relationships.' The computers and the international
networks, Rossetto believes, are media with such
powerful messages that in a generation, the world will
be a different place. Digitally doomed are mammoth
corporations, political parties, the conventional
school, the commute to the workplace, orthodox finances
including national budgets, and popular entertainment ?
Even the family will change. 'What happens when
families come back together because work is done at
home?' asks Rossetto. 'What neuroses will that
expose?'"
- In this 1995 online essay, Justin Hall makes the
statement: "For the jobs of tomorrow, in the
service sector, the home is the workplace. They already
have a catchphrase for it - telecommuting ... You can
be near your kids, your pets, your garden, in the
comfort of your own home, work on your computer and
video teleconference to your meetings. Each office I
have worked in has sucked up hours of my day. Dealing
with other people's crises, lounging by the coffee
machine, pointless meetings, getting from one place to
the other. Home working, the time you waste is your
own, around your family and friends. Set your own
schedule, in your own environment, no commuting. If we
abandon the concept of the inner-city office workplace,
we can begin to unpave this country ... people will be
rooted in their local communities while maintaining
global presence. Home cooking and home improvement; the
family structure will be bolstered by the presence of
parents, in communities of energized folk."
- In his 1995 book "Silicon Snake Oil,"
writer Clifford Stoll shares his take on the
Internet's future implications: "Networks hold
out the promise of telecommuting. One day, many of us
will be able to work at home, any hour of the day or
night. We'll save gas, have closer family ties, and
have a happier workplace. Oh? I doubt our offices will
be replaced by minions working from home. The lack of
meetings and personal interaction isolates workers and
reduces loyalty. Nor is a house necessarily an
efficient place to work, what with the constant
interruptions and lack of office fixtures. Perhaps
it'll work for jobs where one never has to meet
anyone else, like data entry or telephone sales. What a
way to turn a home into a prison."
- The 1995 book "The Information
Revolution," edited by Donald Altschiller, carries
a reprint of the Fall 1994, New Perspectives Quarterly
article "Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age,"
by social critics Esther Dyson, George Gilder, Jay
Keyworth and Alvin Toffler. They write: "No one
knows what the Third Wave communities of the future
will look like, or where demassification will
ultimately lead. It is clear, however, that cyberspace
will play an important role in knitting together the
diverse communities of tomorrow, facilitating the
creation of electronic neighborhoods bound together not
by geography but by shared interests. Socially, putting
advanced computing in the hands of entire populations
will alleviate pressure on highways, reduce air
pollution, allow people to live further away from
crowded or dangerous urban areas, and expand family
time."
Groups of zealots in politics, in religion, and in
groups advocating violence will solidify, and their
numbers will increase by 2014 as tight personal
networks flourish online.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary skews in agreement with the prediction.
Of course, if the internet can build up positive social
networks, there is no reason to assume it could do
anything but the identical thing for negative social
networks. Here are a few selections:
- In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, futurist Peter
Schwartz, a co-founder of the Global Business Network,
discusses the high-tech future that will develop out of
a knowledge-based world with futurist Alvin Toffler,
the co-author (with his wife Heidi Toffler) of
"Future Shock," "The Third Wave"
and "War and Anti-War." Schwartz quotes
Toffler saying: "The world system is splitting
into three parts - three different layers or tiers - or
more accurately three different civilizations. Of
course, you'll continue to have agrarian countries
and you'll continue to have the mass-manufacturing
cheap-labor suppliers, at least for a transitional
period. But we are ... rapidly developing a chain of
info-intensive countries whose economics depend not on
the hoe or the assembly-line but on brainpower ... The
emerging third-wave civilization is going to collide
head-on with the old first and second civilizations.
One of the things we ought to learn from history is
that when waves of change collide they create
countercurrents. When the first and the second wave
collided we had civil wars, upheavals, political
revolutions, forced migrations. The master conflict of
the 21st century will not be between cultures but
between the three supercivilizations - between
agrarianism and industrialism and
post-industrialism."
- In a 1995 article in Government Technology, Blake
Harris writes: "The dark side of cyberspace
harbors hackers pirating software and exchanging
hacking techniques, drug smugglers using e-mail,
political extremists advocating racism, hate and
violence, predators seeking to seduce children,
pornographers with modems, and maybe even terrorist
networks plotting atrocities - in fact, almost every
form of evil that already exists in our society. It is
a little terrifying, at times, to think that virtually
anyone, armed simply with a computer, modem and
telephone line, can, at least in theory, reach a
worldwide audience with whatever communication he or
she wishes. This fact, coupled with the anarchic
freedom of the Internet, has brought to a head a number
of fundamental issues that may have significant
ramifications on how the Information Age unfolds:
surveillance and public safety vs. privacy through
encryption and anonymity, censorship vs. free
expression, more control vs. a decentralized anarchy of
information."
-In his 1994 book "City of Bits," MIT
computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes:
"Network pimps will offer ways to do something
sordid (but safe) with lubriciously programmed
telehookers. (This is an obvious extrapolation of the
telephone's transformation of the whorehouse into
the call-girl operation.) Telemolesters will lurk.
Telethugs will reach out and punch someone."
- In a 1995 article for Computerworld, Gary Anthes
writes about the statements made by attendees at a
recent conference on information warfare, quoting
Stephen Kent of Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. Anthes
writes: "Problems and threats: 'It's clear
that we have lots of vulnerable systems that the
country depends on. Terrorist organizations are
especially worrisome. They are eager for the kind of
notoriety that would attend their knocking out the
telephone system or air traffic control system.' -
Stephen Kent, chief scientist for security technology
at Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., Cambridge,
Mass."
-The 1994 book "The Information Revolution,"
edited by Donald Altschiller, carries a reprint of the
Jan. 23, 1995, U.S. News & World Report article
"Policing Cyberspace" by Vince Sussman.
Sussman explores First Amendment rights in cyberspace.
The article includes an interview with FBI Special
Agent William Tafoya. Sussman quotes Tafoya, writing:
"Crime involving high technology is going to be
off the boards,' predicts FBI Special Agent William
Tafoya, the man who created the bureau's home page
on the Internet, the worldwide computer network.
'It won't be long before the bad guys outstrip
our ability to keep up with them. '"
- In his 1994 book "Out of Control: The New
Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic
World," Kevin Kelly, editor of Wired magazine,
quotes Tim May in a discussion of the future impact of
encryption and anonymous remailers: "I confess my
misgivings about the potential market for anonymity to
Tim: 'Seems like the perfect thing for ransom
notes, extortion threats, bribes, blackmail, insider
trading and terrorism.' 'Well,' Tim
answers. 'what about selling information that
isn't viewed as legal, say about pot growing,
do-it-yourself abortion, cryonics, or even peddling
alternative medical information without a license? What
about the anonymity wanted for whistleblowers,
confessionals and dating personals?"
- The 1995 book "The Information
Revolution," edited by Donald Altschiller, carries
a reprint of the Jan. 23, 1995, U.S. News & World
Report article "Policing Cyberspace" by Vince
Sussman. Sussman explores First Amendment rights in
cyberspace. In the article, he interviews Carlton
Fitzpatrick, branch chief of FLETC's Financial
Fraud Institute. Sussman writes: "'Cyberspace
is like a neighborhood without a police
department,' says FLETC's [Carlton]
Fitzpatrick. One of the most pressing dangers, says
Fitzpatrick, is that people bound by hate and racism
are no longer separated by time and distance. They can
share their frustrations at nightly computerized
meetings. 'What some people call hate crimes are
going to increase, and the networks are going to feed
them,' predicts Fitzpatrick, [branch chief of
FLETC's Financial Fraud Institute]. 'I believe
in the First Amendment. But sometimes it can be a noose
society hangs itself with."
- In a 1995 article in New Scientist, Kurt Kleiner
reports on what Mike Godwin and David Banisar are
saying about fears that the government may try to
control or acquire the ability to tap into secure
communications on the Internet. Kleiner writes:
"Users of the Internet are afraid that there will
be some sort of clampdown on them because of the wave
of paranoia that has swept the country after the
Oklahoma City bombing. Newspapers and TV shows have
carried stories about the sort of information that is
available over the Internet. For instance, they point
out that 'The Terrorist's Handbook' is easy
to find, complete with detailed information on how to
mix and detonate more than a dozen kinds of explosives,
including the one used in the Oklahoma City bombing. It
also became clear after the bombing that members of
militia groups, such as the one the bomber belonged to,
communicate via the Internet. Godwin points out that so
far no one in a government position has called for
censorship of the Internet. And David Banisar, of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, thinks such
censorship is unlikely. 'What can they do? Say no
political organizing over the Internet? That's
clearly unconstitutional.'"
- In May 1995, Wired magazine ran an article that was
excerpted from a transcript of a speech Bruce Sterling
delivered at the High Technology Crime Investigation
Association conference in November 1994. Sterling says:
"Countries that have offshore money laundries are
gonna have offshore data laundries. Countries that now
have lousy oppressive governments and smart, determined
terrorist revolutionaries are gonna have lousy
oppressive governments and smart determined terrorist
revolutionaries with computers. Not too long after
that, they're going to have tyrannical
revolutionary governments run by zealots with
computers; then we're likely to see just how close
to Big Brother a government can really get. Dealing
with these people is going to be a big problem for
us."
By 2014, most people will use the internet in a way
that filters out information that challenges their
viewpoints on political and social issues. This will
further polarize political discourse and make it
difficult or impossible to develop meaningful consensus
on public problems.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
some commentary is in agreement with this prediction.
There were also some people who projected that the
internet could bring about a new pluralism. Here are
some examples from both sides:
- For a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Jay Kinney,
publisher and editor of Gnosis: A Journal of the
Western Inner Traditions, writes: "One gets the
sense that, given half a chance, the electorate would
love to ditch the old left/right horseshoe match and
take on some new paradigms altogether ... Some
techno-optimists, entranced with the rapid expansion of
cyberspace, are convinced that the rough contours of
the future can be spotted in the shadowy forms dancing
across their computer screens. The pounding drums of
cypherpunks, Usenet orators, civil-liberties activists,
and venture capitalists, all undulating together in the
flickering RGB glow, seem to whisper alluring promises
of power, privacy, and pluralism in the politics to
come ? When all is said and done, is there a new
politics emerging in the Net/cyberspace/digital
culture? Short answer: Yes, if by 'new
politics' one means an increased visibility for
certain strains of ideology, like libertarianism, that
have not generally made it through the mass media's
bozo-filters. Libertarianism - with its zealous
advocacy of laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation, and
privatization - is a ready-made 'killer app'
for high-tech start-ups, would-be millionaires, and the
rest of the 'don't tread on me' cybercrew.
Mix this in with the current impatience toward
half-failed liberal solutions and mammoth government
and we may see some unusually radical proposals enacted
in Washington."
- A paper titled "Computer-Mediated Communication
and the American Collectivity: The Dimensions of
Community Within Cyberspace," by Jan Fernback and
Brad Thompson, was presented at the annual convention
of the International Communication Association,
Albuquerque, N.M., May 1995. It was reprinted in full
form on Howard Rheingold's Web site. This is an
excerpt: "CMC [Computer-Mediated Communication]
does not, at this point, hold the promise of enhancing
democracy because it promotes communities of interest
that are just as narrowly defined as current public
factions defined by identity (whether it be racial,
sexual, or religious). Public discourse ends when
identities become the last, unyielding basis for
argumentation that strives ideally to achieve consensus
based on a common good."
-In a 1994 article for Wilson Quarterly, Edward Tenner
writes: "Yes, networks can help people strengthen
neighborhoods and communities. But they also encourage
people to find ways out. Unhappy with your schools?
Join the parents who have turned to home schooling.
Teaching materials and mutual support are already
available online, and home educators have been using
electronic mail effectively to organize and lobby for
their rights. Their children may learn all they need
to, but the economist Albert O. Hirschman has pointed
out that when the most quality-conscious users are free
to leave a troubled system, whether railroads or
schools, the system suffers further by losing its most
vocal critics. Any future information network will help
unhappy people secede, at least mentally, from
institutions they do not like, much as the interstate
highway system allowed the affluent to flee the cities
for the suburbs and exurbs. Prescribing mobility,
whether automotive or electronic, as an antidote to
society's fragmentation is like recommending
champagne as a hangover remedy."
- In a 1995 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, Paul
Virilio, the emblematic French theorist of technology
and author of "Pure War, Speed and Politics,"
and "War and Cinema: the Logistics of
Perception," writes: "The dictatorship of
speed at the limit will increasingly clash with
representative democracy. When some essayists address
us in terms of 'cyber-democracy,' of virtual
democracy; when others state that 'opinion
democracy' is going to replace 'political
parties democracy,' one cannot fail to see anything
but this loss of orientation in matters political, of
which the March 1994 'media-coup' by Mr. Silvio
Berlusconi was an Italian-style prefiguration. The
advent of the age of viewer-counts and opinion polls
reigning supreme will necessarily be advanced by this
type of technology."
- In a 1995 article for Governing, Christopher Conte
quotes Andrew Blau of the Benton Foundation. Conte
writes: "The ease and sheer speed of new
communications technologies give the information
superhighway its appeal. But those same qualities
provoke fears among people who see it as a threat to
representative democracy. 'Real democracy is slow
and deliberative,' notes Andrew Blau, director of
the communications policy project for the Benton
Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that promotes the
use of the information superhighway. 'It's so
easy to imagine a scenario in which technology is used
to get instant judgments from people. If it is used
that way, we haven't seen anything yet when it
comes to high-tech lynchings.'"
- In his 1995 book "The Electronic Republic:
Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age,"
Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News and
PBS, writes: "'Boiler room' organizations,
hired by special interests, will seek to manufacture
and mobilize 'grassroots' opinion and stimulate
the outpouring of selected messages and votes - to make
sure that particular viewpoints are heard. They do that
now. In the next century, it will become a mainstream
business. Computerized political advertising,
promotion, and marketing campaigns, targeted with as
much intensity as legislators, regulators, and public
officials are lobbied today, because public opinion -
the fourth branch of government - will play an even
more pivotal role in major government
decisions."
- In the July 1994 issue of The Network Observer
online newsletter, Barbara Welling Hall writes about
networking, democracy and computers: "Inequitable
access to these technologies at present and in the
foreseeable future profoundly diminishes the diversity
of opinions that are vetted electronically. Electronic
communities may provide genuine benefits to isolated
individuals, but if these communities are to be
presented as providing global rather than partial
access to political discourse, this promise may be
squandered. Finally, although freedom of information
may hamper some dangerous actions, more information
alone is not a substitute for the development of
critical or compassionate faculties. Data may reveal
the existence of injustice, but data alone rarely
generate the political will either to make difficult
trade-offs or to discover creative solutions to
perennial problems."
In 10 years, the increasing use of online medical
resources will yield substantial improvement in many of
the pervasive problems now facing healthcare-including
rising healthcare costs, poor customer service, the
high prevalence of medical mistakes, malpractice
concerns, and lack of access to medical care for many
Americans.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the general drift of the commentary skews in agreement
with the prediction. The internet was seen as a way to
streamline the connection between consumers and
health-care providers, and the availability of
health-education data was seen as a key to improving
millions of lives in Third World nations. Here are some
examples:
- In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Joe Flower
explains the types of changes that could come in health
care through the use of networked computing. Flower
writes: "The coming American health care system
has everything to do with smart cards and dumb
terminals, big bandwidth and microprobes, genetic
markers and info-markets. And it doesn't look like
anything you've read in the paper ... Over the next
decade, we will see health care become less
doctor-centered, and more community- and
family-centered. Medicine itself will become less of an
art and more fact-based. Yet at the same time it will
come to feel more humane ? Eventually all health
records, from insurance information to X-rays and MRI
scans will go digital - and eventually you will carry
all that information with you on a card ? The very
discoveries and inventions that will continue to
transform medical practice will push it to be less
about hardware, less about vast and powerful machines
watched over by highly trained acolytes, and more about
shared information ? They carry the possibility of
providing major assistance in revolutionizing health
care, making it both cheaper and better, spreading it
wider, involving people in making decisions about their
own lives, helping America (and eventually the world)
build truly healthier communities."
- The 1995 book "The Information
Revolution," edited by Donald Altschiller, carries
a reprint of the 1993 report of the Information
Infrastructure Task Force. In "The National
Information Infrastructure: Agenda for Action,"
members of the commission report: "Experts
estimate that telecommunications applications could
reduce health care costs by $36 to $100 billion each
year while improving quality and increasing access.
Below are some of the existing and potential
applications. - Telemedicine: By using telemedicine,
doctors and other care givers can consult with
specialists thousands of miles away; continually
upgrade their education and skills; and share medical
records and x-rays ... - Unified Electronic Claims:
More than 4 billion health care claims are submitted
annually from health care providers to reimbursement
organizations such as insurance companies, Medicare,
Medicaid, and HMOs - The administrative costs of the
U.S. health care systems could be dramatically reduced
by moving towards standardized electronic submission
and processing of claims. - Personal Health Information
Systems: The United States can use computers and
networks to promote self-care and prevention by making
health care information available 24 hours a day in a
form that aids decision making. - Michael McDonald,
chairman of the Communications and computer
Applications in Public Health (CCAPH) estimates that
even if personal health information systems were used
only 25 to 35 percent of the time, $40 to $60 billion
could be saved. - Computer-Based Patient Records:
Computer-Based Patient Records are critical to
improving the quality and reducing the cost of health
care."
- A research group representing The Global Health
Network, an international group with the hope of using
the Internet to establish a better world of medicine
and prevention, made the following statement in a
research presentation at INET '95, the Internet
Society's 1995 International Networking Conference.
The group reports: "We should be able to monitor
and forecast diseases as well as we monitor the weather
if we take on new technologies. Having an Internet
backbone to national and global-disease monitoring can
yield accurate and timely information concerning
disease conditions ? At the time of a disaster one of
the - if not the most critical - needs is that of
communication."
By 2014, all media, including audio, video, print, and
voice, will stream in and out of the home or office via
the internet. Computers that coordinate and control
video games, audio, and video will become the
centerpiece of the living room and will link to
networked devices around the household, replacing the
television's central place in the home.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the general drift of the commentary skews in agreement
with this prediction. At the time, whether they called
it a television, a computer or a teleputer, most
experts were saying that our homes would be tied to a
network of information flowing inward and outward. Here
are some examples:
- In a 1994 article for Wilson Quarterly, Douglas
Gomery writes: "The basic device serving consumers
at home will almost certainly be some sort of hybrid
telecomputer that marries a computer processor and a
television screen. It will display wide-screen images,
easily accommodating all of Hollywood's
CinemaScope-like images without lopping off the sides
... Telecomputers of the sort described here will cost
thousands of dollars each. When they finally become
widely available, for example, digital high-definition
television (HDTV) sets are likely to cost in the
neighborhood of $5,000. To wire the nation with
fiber-optic cable, add at least $1,000 per household,
or a cool $100 billion for the whole country. That is
not to mention the cost of wiring businesses,
government of and nonprofit institutions. Sums of this
size serve as reminders that, much as we like to think
of the infohighway as the centerpiece of a
'postindustrial' era, building it will be a
very old-fashioned capital-intensive undertaking. It
will take a long time, and it will be very
expensive."
- In a 1995 article for Time, reporter Barrett Seaman
writes about future technologies. He quotes Mark
Weiser. He writes: "At Xerox's Palo Alto
Research Center in California, where the PC, on-screen
icons and the laser printer originated, Mark Weiser,
manager of the computer science laboratory, envisions a
world in which flat-panel screens bearing a multitude
of images will be household regulars. They will range
from tiny ones, costing perhaps $5 each and plastered
everywhere, to wall-size ones for viewing video. The
smaller ones, says Weiser, are 'where you'll
plan your grocery list or do your homework. They'll
be the equivalent of Post-it notes on the refrigerator
or the crumpled-up notepaper in your pocket.' In
Weiser's world, people will wake up to a tiny
bedside screen that gives the time and the weather
forecast and even displays news headlines or sports
scores. Pocket-size screens would also serve as remote
controls for larger screens in the bedroom or living
room, where family members will use them variously to
watch TV, read the newspaper (which will be customized
for each member's personal interests) or draw up
the family grocery list."
- In his 1995 book "The Road Ahead,"
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: "Your television
set will not look like a computer and won't have a
keyboard, but the additional electronics inside or
attached will make it architecturally a computer like a
PC. Television sets will connect to the highway via a
set-top box similar to ones supplied today by most
cable TV companies. But these new set-top boxes will
include a very powerful general-purpose computer. The
box may be located inside a television, behind a
television, on top of a television, on a basement wall,
or even outside the house. Both the PC and the set-top
box will connect to the information highway and conduct
a 'dialogue' with the switches and servers of
the network, retrieving information and programming and
relaying the subscriber's choices."
- In a 1994 article he wrote for National Review,
George Gilder, a fellow of the Discovery Institute in
Seattle and author of "Life After
Television," expounds on his views of future
communications. He writes: "Within the next 10
years, this explosive technological advance in both
networks and processors virtually guarantees that the
personal-computer model of distributed intelligence and
control will unseat the emperors of the mass media and
blow away the television model of centralization. The
teleputer - a revolutionary PC of the next decade -
will give every household hacker the productive
potential of a factory czar of the industrial era and
the communications power of a broadcast tycoon of the
television age. Broadcasting hierarchies will give way
to computer heterarchies - peer networks in which the
terminals are essentially equal in power and there is
no center at all."
Pervasive high-speed information networks will usher
in an age of creativity in which people use the
internet to collaborate with others and take advantage
of digital libraries to make more music, art, and
literature. A large body of independently-produced
creative works will be freely circulated online and
will command widespread attention from the
public.
In the data in the Predictions Database (1990-95),
the commentary followed in agreement with this
prediction. At the time the digital libraries were
mostly in the early planning stages, but the internet
was born from the desire for human collaboration, so it
was natural to assume that creative people would be
able to mimic the successes found in collaborations on
the internet by researchers in the network community.
Here are some examples:
- In an excerpt from his 1994 book "Life After
Television," George Gilder addresses the future:
"The new law of networks exalts the smallest
coherent system: the individual human mind and spirit.
A healthy culture reflects not the psychology of crowds
but the creativity and inspiration of millions of
individuals reaching for high goals. In place of the
broadcast pyramid, a peer network will emerge in which
all the terminals will be smart."
- In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Daniel
Pinchbeck, a New York-based writer and the editor of
Open City, a literary and art journal, writes:
"Eventually, computers and the Internet may force
artists out of the increasingly esoteric discourse of
the art world. A broader audience may demand that they
reintegrate their work with larger issues related to
science, technology, and humanism. 'I would like to
see a return to that classical breadth of inquiry that
artists were able to make in the Renaissance,' says
Michael Joaquin Grey. Computers may also force radical
artists to return to a notion of craft. In the
contemporary art world, painstaking studio process
often seems to matter less than an up-to-the-minute
ironic pose. Artists of the past had to grapple with
techniques ranging from draftsmanship to fresco
painting if they wanted to achieve greatness. Their
creative inheritors may have to master digital tools if
they hope to reach beyond the restrictive walls of
galleries and museums."
- In his 1995 book "The Road Ahead,"
Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: "Over time we
will start to create new forms and formats that will go
significantly beyond what we know now. The exponential
expansion of computing power will keep changing the
rules and opening new possibilities that will seem as
remote and farfetched then as some of the things
I've speculated on here might seem today. Talent
and creativity have always shaped advances in
unpredictable ways ... The information highway will
open undreamed-of artistic and scientific opportunities
to a new generation of geniuses."
- In a 1991 article for The New York Times, John
Markoff interviews Internet pioneer Robert Kahn as he
explains the nation's planned "national data
highway." Markoff writes: "This network of
fiber-optic cables, which would completed replace
existing copper lines, is viewed by many scientists and
executives as both a vital research tool and an
essential part of the country's 'information
infrastructure' for the next century ... '[The
Internet] will unleash a tremendous amount of
creativity and innovation which will lead to
capabilities we can't even imagine today,' said
Robert Kahn, a scientist at the Corporation for
National Research Initiatives, a Reston, Va., research
organization that is coordinating consortiums of
corporations, research laboratories and universities
developing extremely fast computer
networks."
- In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, media critic
Jon Katz writes: "The explosion of energy coming
from digital designers, musicians, filmmakers,
photographers, and even advertisers is altering our
basic notions of creativity. A new dream of the future
is being born. Of course, in a half-century or so,
these same digital revolutionaries will form the
nostalgic material of somebody else's
'history.' Imagine the writer of that book - or
CD-ROM or digital bedside laptop tablet - longing for
the time when clunky computers sprouted wires, modems
hissed, and chips held finite memory. Think how much
wonder our time might hold."
By 2014, 90% of all Americans will go online from home
via high-speed networks that are dramatically faster
than today's high-speed
networks.
In the Predictions Database (1990-95), the
commentary was firmly behind the development of
high-speed networks, and the vision was that these
would come sooner rather than later. Most of this came
after the introduction of the World Wide Web, with its
ability to display images; the prospect of being able
to exchange large video files and stream live video
programming drove the development of this network
technology. Here are some statements on delivering
large amounts of data at high speeds:
- In a 1993 paper in reaction to the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration's
proposed goals, New York Law School Professor Michael
Botein writes: "This area is fraught with perils
... the U.S. government and industry should proceed
with caution in entering the new digital age.
High-capacity fiber systems probably will become a
mainstay of all developed countries' telecom
infrastructure at some point in the next millennium.
For the moment, however, it might be wise to slow the
whole process down a bit. After all, the U.S. should
know by now that being first into a new technology is
not always a benefit; the ... experience with NTSC
television should be a nightly reminder to U.S. telecom
policy planners of the value of letting others make the
mistakes."
- In a 1995 article for Computerworld, Gordon Bell
looks ahead. Bell proposed a plan for a U.S. research
and education network in a 1987 report to the Office of
Science and Technology in response to a congressional
request by Al Gore. He was a technology leader at
Digital Equipment Corporation (where he led the
development of the VAX computer) and with Microsoft:
"Phone communications will evolve toward a single,
pervasive digital dial tone for high-speed networks.
These will offer bandwidth scalable to several hundred
megabits per second for handling video over phone lines
and virtual reality."
- In his 1994 book "City of Bits," MIT
computer scientist William J. Mitchell writes:
"The bondage of bandwidth is displacing the
tyranny of distance, and a new economy of land use and
transportation is emerging - an economy in which
high-bandwidth connectivity is an increasingly crucial
variable ? The most crucial task before us is not one
of putting in place the digital plumbing of broadband
communications links and associated electronic
appliances (which we will certainly get anyway), nor
even of producing electronically deliverable
'content,' but rather one of imagining and
creating digitally mediated environments for the kinds
of lives that we will want to lead and the sorts of
communities that we will want to have."
- In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Nicholas
Negroponte, founder of MIT's Media Lab, writes:
"In 2020, people will look back and be mighty
annoyed by our profligate insistence on wiring a
fiber-coax hybrid to the home rather than swallowing
the cost of an all-fiber solution. They'll ask,
'Why didn't our parents and grandparents plan
more effectively for the future?' As far as the
American home is concerned, the phone companies have
the right architecture (switched services), and the
cable companies have the right bandwidth (broadband
services). We need the union of these: switched
broadband services. But how do we get from here to
there? No one will deny that the long-term solution is
to install fiber all the way, but the benefits seem
diffuse and the costs acute. In the eyes of the telcos
and cable companies, the question is financial - and
since the near-term balance sheets don't add up,
fiber is not being laid all the way. One way around
this problem is to circumvent the private market and
let a telecommunications monopoly build the
infrastructure, which is exactly what Telecom Italia is
doing ... Italy will have a far better multimedia
telecommunications system than the United States by
2000."
|
