The thing is, it grew from the bottom up. It began with the people, with two people reaching out to touch each other. The humanness of it is very compelling to me. It is not about technology, or bits and bauds and bytes; it is about people and communicating with one another … The Internet is the means of communicating in the future. You wouldn’t think about living today without a telephone. This is an extension of the telephone and the television. They are all coming together – media convergence. You can either get with the program or get left behind. I get more information into my mind in a six-hour session on the Internet than I do from all the books I read in a week. Most of the books, newspapers and periodicals I read are way behind the curve of information anyway. The Internet makes them largely irrelevant.
Predictor: Boucher, H.A. "Red"
Prediction, in context:In a June 1995 article in the Anchorage Daily News, Jay Blucher interviews 74-year-old telecommunications consultant H.A. “Red” Boucher about lifelong learning. Blucher quotes Boucher saying: ”When we communicate online it activates certain neurons in our brains which are not engaged any other way by any other forms of communication. Using your fingers to type the words to someone else gets you involved in a mind-to-mind sorta’ way. There’s something about communicating this way which builds trust and special friendships, too. And this is how the Internet grew. All the little bulletin boards came together to become this giant super-BBS which connected to the universities and the beginnings of this national computer network we have today. The thing is, it grew from the bottom up. It began with the people, with two people reaching out to touch each other. The humanness of it is very compelling to me. It is not about technology, or bits and bauds and bytes; it is about people and communicating with one another … The Internet is the means of communicating in the future. You wouldn’t think about living today without a telephone. This is an extension of the telephone and the television. They are all coming together – media convergence. You can either get with the program or get left behind. I get more information into my mind in a six-hour session on the Internet than I do from all the books I read in a week. Most of the books, newspapers and periodicals I read are way behind the curve of information anyway. The Internet makes them largely irrelevant.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Anchorage Daily News
Title, headline, chapter name: Two Wired Guys; Lifelong Passion Keeps His Mind Young
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page F1
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne