Is the city hanging by its fingertips on the verge of obsolescence? … People love cities and seek them out and always will, because they love the paradox of city life: the excitement and the soothing anonymity of the big crowd. The city will never be obsolete unless and until sheer rot drives people into the countryside.
Predictor: Gelernter, David
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for City Journal, David Gelernter writes: ”Today’s thinking about technology and transportation is mostly useless to cities … Mere physical transportation, the argument goes, is increasingly less important in the information-highway era. The proliferation of powerful computers and networks, of telecommuting and teleconferencing, will ‘allow people to live further away from crowded or dangerous urban areas.’ (This according to Esther Dyson, George Gilder, George Keyworth, and Alvin Toffler in a piece recently distributed over the Internet.) In some versions of this prophecy, the city limps offstage, weak but alive, as the curtain falls. In others it is less fortunate. Is the city hanging by its fingertips on the verge of obsolescence? If so, it was hanging there in 1940 too, and by now must be getting pretty comfortable in that position. Now the information highway and powerful computers spell ultimate doom for the city. It’s all true – up to a point: railroads did ‘allow people to live further away from crowded or dangerous urban areas’ and did make cities less indispensable. So did telephones and the airplane. So did cars and the modern highway. So did the computer, and so will powerful computer networks. And yet people love cities and seek them out and always will, because they love the paradox of city life: the excitement and the soothing anonymity of the big crowd. The city will never be obsolete unless and until sheer rot drives people into the countryside.”
Biography:David Gelernter, a Yale University scientist, was the author of “Mirror Worlds,” “1939: The Lost World of the Fair” and “The Muse in the Machine.” (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: City Journal
Title, headline, chapter name: Bring Back the Urban Visionaries: Why Have the Best Technology Brains Stopped Trying to Solve Urban Problems?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.city-journal.org/html/5_3_bring_back.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Falcone, Peter P.