The prediction, in brief:

40 million simultaneous phone calls, with or without video, don’t make cyberspace unless the people making them can hear or not hear each other, see or not see each other “isovistically,” as a function of position and orientation in a virtual space given by the system itself. Design is required. Architecture is required; and not just to cope with the impact of cyberspace on the surface of the earth, but to give shape to the spaces flowing out of the information flowing between real places and real people.

Predictor: Benedikt, Michael L.

Prediction, in context:

In a lecture at the “New Urbanism Symposium” at Princeton Oct. 17, 1992, that was also developed into a chapter for the book “The New Urbanism,” Michael Benedikt says:”To be sure, left to itself, the new entertainment/communication/computation nexus will bring us 500 channels of interactive television someday, as promised. But 500 channels to choose from don’t make cyberspace unless the places they depict and the things they do are coordinated and arranged in a pattern which no one person can change at will. Similarly, 40 million simultaneous phone calls, with or without video, don’t make cyberspace unless the people making them can hear or not hear each other, see or not see each other ‘isovistically,’ as a function of position and orientation in a virtual space given by the system itself. Design is required. Architecture is required; and not just to cope with the impact of cyberspace on the surface of the earth, but to give shape to the spaces flowing out of the information flowing between real places and real people.”

Date of prediction: October 17, 1992

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: Virtual Communities

Name of publication: The New Urbanism

Title, headline, chapter name: Cityspace, Cyberspace and the Spatiology of Information

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ar.utexas.edu/center/benedikt_articles/cityspace.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Boone, Jason Matthew