Physically, you are very much here today and gone tomorrow, while cyberspace has become the anchor of your career and the linchpin of your reality. In 15 years, that will be a very common sentiment, so common that it will no longer seem odd or even remarkable.
Predictor: Sterling, Bruce
Prediction, in context:A 1995 e-mail interview with science fiction writer and cyberspace commentator Bruce Sterling for Telecommunications International included the following comment from Sterling: ”I recently came up with a notion of my own that another guy later called the ‘Sterling Switch.’ It goes like this: Once upon a time, people lived in the real world. When they logged on to their network in cyberspace it was something very far away, very vaporous, very virtual and unreal. Nowadays, people travel all the time with laptops and modems under their arms, and a lot of the time they don’t know where the heck they are, but when they read their e-mail, hey, their e-mail is always in the same place!. They may not have seen their home address in months, but their electronic address is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. The Sterling Switch is that creepy feeling you get at the airport hotel when you log on to cyberspace and you realize that cyberspace is a lot more ‘there’ than you are. Physically, you are very much here today and gone tomorrow, while cyberspace has become the anchor of your career and the linchpin of your reality. In 15 years, that will be a very common sentiment, so common that it will no longer seem odd or even remarkable.”
Biography:Bruce Sterling, a writer, consultant and science fiction enthusiast, wrote or co-wrote “Schismatrix,” “The Hacker Crackdown” and “The Difference Engine” and edited “Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.” In the 1990s, he wrote tech articles for Fortune, Harper’s, Details, Whole Earth Review and Wired, where he was a contributing writer from its founding. He published the nonfiction book “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” in 2002. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: September 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Telecommunications International
Title, headline, chapter name: Dropping Anchor in Cyberspace
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Vol. 29, Issue 9, Page 115 ISSN: 00402494
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Uhlfelder, Evelyn C.