We believe that ISDN, whatever its limitations, is rapid enough to jump-start the greatest free market the world has ever known.
Predictor: Barlow, John Perry
Prediction, in context:In this 1992 column for Communications of the ACM [Association for Computing Machinery], John Perry Barlow explores what sort of impact the tecnology ISDN, or Integrated Services Digital Network, will have on the future abilities of the home computer: ”We believe that ISDN, whatever its limitations, is rapid enough to jump-start the greatest free market the world has ever known. Widespead deployment of ISDN, combined with recent developments in the compression technology, could break us out of what Adobe’s John Warnock calls the ‘ascii jail,’ delivering to the home graphically rich documents, commercial software objects, and real-time multimedia. Bringing consumers to Cyberspace would have the same invigorating effect on online technology which the advent of the PC had on computing.”
Biography:John Perry Barlow helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 with WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) members Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore in direct response to a threat to free speech. Barlow’s was one of the loudest voices in the battle to keep the Internet unfettered while still encouraging that it become a tool available to everyone. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1992
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Pipeline/Switching/Hardware
Name of publication: Communications of the ACM
Title, headline, chapter name: The Great Work
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.eff.org/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/HTML/complete_acm_columns.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Bizzell, Natalie