An industry will grow up around individuals licensing their points of view for use in context engines in exchange for usage royalties. Imagine being able to give your news agent the personality and perspective of Walter Cronkite, Howard Stern or John Updike, or consult the software-doubles of Siskel and Ebert for advice on cool movies to view. Just as talk show hosts have become the movers and shakers of post-network TV today, individuals with unique points of view could become the superstars of cyberspace, their personalities immortalized in software traversing the Web.
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:”In a world of hyper-abundant content, point of view will become the scarcest of resources, and we will race to model human points of view within the personalities of our software agents. I will even bet that an industry will grow up around individuals licensing their points of view for use in context engines in exchange for usage royalties. Imagine being able to give your news agent the personality and perspective of Walter Cronkite, Howard Stern or John Updike, or consult the software-doubles of Siskel and Ebert for advice on cool movies to view. Just as talk show hosts have become the movers and shakers of post-network TV today, individuals with unique points of view could become the superstars of cyberspace, their personalities immortalized in software traversing the Web.”
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: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
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