[An] avalanche of content … will make context the scarce resource. Consumers will pay serious money for anything that helps them sift and sort and gather the pearls that satisfy their fickle media hungers. The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools.
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: ”[An] avalanche of content … will make context the scarce resource. Consumers will pay serious money for anything that helps them sift and sort and gather the pearls that satisfy their fickle media hungers. The future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the banal expanses of cyberspace.”
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