The prediction, in brief:

Even when gender or whatever are someone fixed by the nature of the board, there is the question of the structural effects of the culturally constituted technology. Another question to raise is whether the individuals on these boards know each other in face-to-face relations before joining the board. I suspect each of these conditions will influence quite a bit the question of subject constitution.

Predictor: Poster, Mark

Prediction, in context:

In a 1994 e-mail interview with Erick Heroux, Mark Poster, a member of the humanities faculty at the University of California at Irvine and author of “The Second Media Age,” talks about discussion boards and their cultural impact:”I would be interested to know how many [Internet] interest groups there are that are defined by gender or ethnicity and how many where identity is constructed out of anonymity. Of course, one could say that identity is always constructed, and one could say that identity is always unchanging … We do need empirical studies of virtual communities in relation to this question, although I think many such are under way and some will be coming out this year … Even when gender or whatever are someone fixed by the nature of the board, there is the question of the structural effects of the culturally constituted technology. Another question to raise is whether the individuals on these boards know each other in face-to-face relations before joining the board. I suspect each of these conditions will influence quite a bit the question of subject constitution.”

Biography:

Mark Poster wrote the paper “Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere” in 1995 while teaching at the University of California, Irvine. He also wrote about technology for Wired magazine. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: October 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: MOOs/MUDs/B-Boards/Newsgroups

Name of publication: University of Oregon Web site

Title, headline, chapter name: Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/2-Poster.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas