Cultural patterns will be skewed to a more profound degree by new communication technologies: advanced target marketing technologies, specialized news services, and the “infobots” on the horizon intensify the differences between the communication and resource haves and have-nots … If the information superhighways are left to the commercial giants, public life will become yet more gray, empty, inequitable, and irrelevant.
Predictor: Monberg, John
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication magazine, John Monberg, a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, writes: ”The adoption of information technology alters the global division of labor, again renegotiating the social contract. As Robert Reich has recognized, the haves and the have-nots no longer remain so closely tied to a common fate. Employment patterns and living patterns are already stratified. Cultural patterns will be skewed to a more profound degree by new communication technologies: advanced target marketing technologies, specialized news services, and the ‘infobots’ on the horizon intensify the differences between the communication and resource haves and have-nots. At the center of German philosopher and social critic Jurgen Habermas’ intellectual work stands ‘[t]he conviction that a humane collective life depends on the vulnerable forms of innovation-bearing, reciprocal and unforcedly egalitarian everyday communication.’ We may choose to create, maintain, and expand such settings if we desire, but if the information superhighways are left to the commercial giants, public life will become yet more gray, empty, inequitable, and irrelevant.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Digital Divide
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine
Title, headline, chapter name: Welcome to the Emerald City! Please Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/nov/emerald.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Walsh, Meghan