Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Revolution in the Revolution: In the ’60s Regis Debray Fought Beside Che Guevara in Bolivia. Today, His Obsession Isn’t Ideology – it’s Mediology

Futurologists such as Alvin Toffler tend to overemphasize the thread of technological determinism in history and then project it into the future. The technologies of transmission – writing systems, printing presses, and computers – do not necessarily drive change in a predictably specific direction … Each technical step forward means a compensating step backward in our mind-set … By transforming three-quarters of the world into a cultural proletariat, you will make people of this class into more determined rebels in the 21st century. Far more determined, in fact, than the economic proletariat has been in the 20th century … machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die.

Modem Grrrl: Future Hacker St. Jude Has Some Advice for Women Who See Technology as a Problem: Get Modems

I’m a future hacker; I’m trying to get root access to the future. I want to raid its system of thought. Grrr. Machines disappoint me. I just can’t love any of these wares, hard or soft. I’m nostalgic for the future. We need ultrahigh res! Give us bandwidth or kill us! Let’s see the ultraviolet polka-dot flowers that hummingbirds see, and smell ’em like the bees do. And crank up the sensorium all across the board.

Don’t Repackage – Redefine! We Have to Resist Media Imperialism – the Tendency to Colonize, to Define New Technologies in Terms of the Old

Successful convergence means having the willingness to subordinate your media expertise instead of imposing it. It means treating a new medium on its terms – not yours. It means having the patience to relax and follow your curiosity instead of hyperventilating and chasing the crowd. We need to be convergence contrarians – willing to challenge conventional wisdom, yet able to explore other possibilities. Now I don’t care what software, hardware, firmware, floppyware, infoware, or underware that technology convergence creates for our creative communities. I just care that real editorship is involved in the process, contrarian and contentious all the way, because I trust absolutely that interesting things will follow.

Don’t Repackage – Redefine! We Have to Resist Media Imperialism – the Tendency to Colonize, to Define New Technologies in Terms of the Old

We are on the brink of a great convergence – where the computer, the television, and the telephone will meet to create truly new communications products. Who knows how they’ll get along? Who knows what the result will be? What we do know is that the time for hype has passed. And the time has arrived for us to do the tough conceptual work of coming up with a new discipline, a new vocabulary, a new paradigm for what is emerging.

Don’t Repackage – Redefine! We Have to Resist Media Imperialism – the Tendency to Colonize, to Define New Technologies in Terms of the Old

We have access to mind-numbing amounts of data – the trash and the treasure, the ridiculous and the not-so-sublime … We were promised that all these new options would enrich us. And yet even with this gluttony of choices, our diet is getting thinner … The acceleration of daily life, this confusing mad rush to get ahead of the future, the speed of life in and about the media, is eroding our ability to gather the building blocks to do the real and necessary work of creating new products.