A real estate agent builds a model of you from a succession of houses that fit your taste with varying degrees of success. Now imagine a telephone-answering agent, a news agent, or an electronic-mail-managing agent. What they all have in common is the ability to model you. It is not just a matter of completing a questionnaire or having a fixed profile. Interface agents must learn and develop over time, like human friends and assistants.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Being Digital,” Nicholas Negroponte writes:”A real estate agent builds a model of you from a succession of houses that fit your taste with varying degrees of success. Now imagine a telephone-answering agent, a news agent, or an electronic-mail-managing agent. What they all have in common is the ability to model you. It is not just a matter of completing a questionnaire or having a fixed profile. Interface agents must learn and develop over time, like human friends and assistants … A future interface agent is also seen as some centralized omniscient Orwellian character. A much more likely outcome is a collection of computer programs and personal appliances, each of which is pretty good at one thing and very good at communicating with the others.”
Biography:Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and a popular speaker and writer about technologies of the future, wrote one of the 1990s’ best-selling books about the new future of communications, “Being Digital.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: February 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
Name of publication: Being Digital (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 12: Less Is More
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 155, 157
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne