The Top 25 Brief But Biting
Internet Quotes of 1990-1995
These were selected from the 4,200 statements included in the Early ’90s Predictions Database. For more details regarding the original publication of these quotes, use the ’90s Database Search – see link here.
In the world of the future, people will use low-cost Radio Shack equipment to spy on themselves to find out who they are. – Eric Hughes, 1992
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Cyberspace without carefully laid channels of choice may become a waste of space. – Michael Heim, 1992
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Computers will no longer be a place to hide from girls or zits or lack of social skills, as it was for many of us. – David Liddle, 1993
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The role of capital as an editor is being removed. – R.U. Sirius (real name, Ken Goffman), 1993
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We should have learning centers, neighborhood electronic cottages … [but] it would be easier to get the Pope to become a Buddhist than to get the schools to change. – Ed Lyell, 1993
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Video conferencing bears a terrifying promise: Distance will no longer be an excuse for not attending meetings. – Steve Steinberg, 1994
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The Internet will be to women in the ’90s what the vibrator was to women in the ’70s. It’s going to have that power. – Lisa Palac, 1994
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The value of information about information can be greater than the value of the information itself. – Nicholas Negroponte, 1994
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Faith in law will not be an effective strategy for high-tech companies. – John Perry Barlow, 1994
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There’s a big cinder block stuck on the technology accelerator pedal, and we’re only gonna go faster and faster, never stopping. – William Gibson, 1994
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Telemolesters will lurk. Telethugs will reach out and punch someone. – William Mitchell, 1994
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From now on, the struggle will not be over mechanical control of the means of information, but over spin-control of the zeitgeist. – Bruce Sterling, 1994
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Much care has to be taken with design and education in order for the change to be positive. We don’t have natural defenses against fat, sugar, salt, alcohol, alkaloids – or media. – Alan Kay, 1994
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The computer will increasingly replace the commuter. – Gerald Celente, 1994
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I’m looking forward to the day when my daughter finds a rolled-up 1,000-pixel-by-1,000-pixel color screen in her cereal packet, with a magnetic back so it sticks to the fridge. – Tim Berners-Lee, 1995
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The Internet, with its open, distributed structure, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. If it can do that, it can withstand corporate America. – Barry Shell, 1995
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Most things that succeed don’t require retraining 250 million people. – Waring Partridge, 1995
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We have to resist media imperialism – the tendency to colonize, to define new technologies in terms of the old … Redefine, don’t repackage. – Barry Diller, 1995
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Hackers are going to help us find ways to have a more humanized system of commerce. – Steven Levy, 1995
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We never will get 100 percent accuracy – [intelligent] agents will always make mistakes. – Pattie Maes, 1995
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There is nothing to be afraid of. It’s not going to be HAL, but “Remains of the Day.” – An Internet enthusiast (quoted by researcher Sherry Turkle) using fictional servants from popular films to explain the ideal intelligent agents, 1995
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The Internet is more like a social space than a thing so that its effects are more like those of Germany than those of hammers. – Mark Poster, 1995
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Tim Berners-Lee forgot to make an expiry date compulsory … any information can just be left and forgotten. It could stay on the network until it is five years out of date. – Brian Carpenter, 1995
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[Encryption] just has to cost more to break than it would cost the bad guys to bribe your cleaning lady. – Stewart Baker
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We techies should be more honest about what computers can do and what they cannot do, or else we are setting ourselves up for a big pie in the face. – Clifford Stoll, 1995