Channel-surfing will be an early casualty, as the first thing to disappear in a 500-channel world will be the channel selector along with the channels themselves. Viewers will welcome the menu-driven TV Guide simulacra that replace this click-and-surf world, but even these menu schemes will be merely transitional forms on the road to far more exotic context tools taking their inspiration from outside the TV universe.
Predictor: Saffo, Paul
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article he wrote for Wired magazine, futurist Paul Saffo addresses the future of digital networks. He writes: ”New tools will eliminate comfortable TV-era content-hunting habits. Channel-surfing will be an early casualty, as the first thing to disappear in a 500-channel world will be the channel selector along with the channels themselves. Viewers will welcome the menu-driven TV Guide simulacra that replace this click-and-surf world, but even these menu schemes will be merely transitional forms on the road to far more exotic context tools taking their inspiration from outside the TV universe.”
Biography:Paul Saffo was the director of a decades-old research and forecasting foundation called the Institute for the Future, located in Menlo Park, Calif., in the 1990s. This Institute was a non-profit think tank that consulted for a large number of businesses and government entities, including telecommunications and consumer companies. (Futurist/Consultant.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Information Overload
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: It’s the Context, Stupid
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.leadership-innovations.com/Articles/context%20stupid.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry