The digital telephony bill passed last year, the Exon amendment recently passed by the Senate and the efforts made by the government to criminalize encryption technology so threaten First Amendment rights that they could presage “the end of the American experiment in democracy.” … The future may hold “a darker path,” Rheingold said, “and that is the path marked by surveillance, by censorship and by monopoly.”
Predictor: Rheingold, Howard
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Editor & Publisher magazine, William Webb covers press coverage of the Internet. He writes about Time’s controversial “Cyberporn” article, which Time later admitted could be construed to be misleading in its negative portrayal of the Internet’s content as a whole. He includes comments by virtual communities researcher Howard Rheingold and by New York Times technology reporter John Markoff. Webb writes: ”Speaking at the recent Connections X conference in Atlanta, Howard Rheingold, author and commentator, assailed the press for not telling the good news about the Internet … In his view, the digital telephony bill passed last year, the Exon amendment recently passed by the Senate and the efforts made by the government to criminalize encryption technology so threaten First Amendment rights that they could presage ‘the end of the American experiment in democracy.’ … A torrent of stories on cyberporn and cyberfraud have buried the good news, according to Rheingold … ‘Millions of people around the world are using this medium already to build new kinds of communities, to creat new kinds of businesses, to conduct educations experiments, and are trying to revitalize the grassroots of democratic institutions,’ he argued. He added that these initiatives ‘could be stopped dead in their tracks’ by recent and pending telecom legislation. The future may hold ‘a darker path,’ Rheingold said, ‘and that is the path marked by surveillance, by censorship and by monopoly.’ … In response to Rheingold’s attacks on the press, reporters such as John Markoff of the New York Times suggested that his rallying cry for online communities ‘may be a little self-serving. I think there’s been plenty of balance; I actually don’t think there’s a problem,’ Markoff said. ‘What we’re seeing here is a predictable backlash. There was a tremendous amount of hype about how Internet was going to change the world for years … The Internet became the nation’s Hula Hoop.’ … In Markoff’s view, rather than being ignored by the press, the virtual community story has been hyped as much as anything else in reporting on a technology that is ‘the telephone of the 1990s.'”
Biography:Howard Rheingold, one of the first writers to illuminate the ideals and foibles of virtual communities, published a webzine called Electric Minds and wrote “Virtual Reality,” “Smart Mobs” and “Virtual Community.” He also was the editor of Whole Earth Review and the Millennium Whole Earth Catalog. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: July 22, 1995
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Democracy
Name of publication: Editor & Publisher
Title, headline, chapter name: Too Much Porn on Internet – Or In the Press?
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?INT=0&SelLanguage=0&TS=1046811119&Did=000000006655325&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=30&Sid=1&RQT=309
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Smith, Ian T.