[The Internet] makes it more efficient to be parochial, but at the same time it gets you to come across people and interests that you wouldn’t have simply by being in your small location with your previous identity. We’re seeing both things happening, and we don’t know which is going to be dominant.
Predictor: Kraut, Robert E.
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about Carnegie Mellon University’s HomeNet Project – a three-year study of how 50 families were using the Internet – Steve Creedy quotes Robert Kraut, a professor of social psychology and human-computer interaction who was involved in the study: ”‘[Children are] getting integrated into groups, they’re making friends, they’re learning how to behave with others,’ Kraut said. ‘I suspect that the computer networks that they have will be used for the same purposes, that they’re just going to be spending time hanging out and talking.’ … Will the Internet expand people’s parochialism by leading them to a wider range of people with the same interests, or will it encourage them to expand their interests to new areas? There are hints of both, but the jury’s still out, according to Kraut. ‘It makes it more efficient to be parochial, but at the same time it gets you to come across people and interests that you wouldn’t have simply by being in your small location with your previous identity,’ he says. ‘We’re seeing both things happening, and we don’t know which is going to be dominant’ … Kraut agrees that the researchers may only be able to glean hints on some issues.”
Biography:Robert Kraut, a professor of social psychology and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, set out in the 1990s to do research on the impact of the Internet on the average U.S. family. He is known for a longitudinal field trial called HomeNet in which carefully assessed how families’ use of the Internet changed over time. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: May 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Title, headline, chapter name: Nuturing the Net
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Business, Page C6
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Krout, Kevin M.