Forms of communication are converging, collapsing the legal distinctions that once brought a semblance of order to free-speech policies. For most of this century societies could draw lines of demarcation separating print media, broadcast media, and common law. New technologies, however, are rendering these divisions obsolete.
Predictor: Smolla, Rodney A.
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 paper, McGill University graduate student, Leslie Regan Shade, discusses free speech and censorship on the Internet. She quotes a line by Rodney Smolla in his 1993 book “Free Speech in an Open Society.” She writes: ÒAs [Rodney] Smolla has remarked [in “Free Speech and An Open Society, Vintage Books, 1993], the impact of technological change on law and policy is not as rapid as the pace of modern communications technologies: Ôforms of communication are converging, collapsing the legal distinctions that once brought a semblance of order to free-speech policies. For most of this century societies could draw lines of demarcation separating print media, broadcast media, and common law. New technologies, however, are rendering these divisions obsolete.ÕÓ
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Censorship/Free Speech
Name of publication: Ethical Issues in Computer Networking: Academic Freedom, Usenet, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech
Title, headline, chapter name: Ethical Issues in Computer Networking: Academic Freedom, Usenet, Censorship, and Freedom of Speech
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
gopher://insight.mcmaster.ca:70/00/org/efc/doc/shade.23nov93
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne