Violations of privacy will certainly exacerbate next year’s Internet backlash, but me, I’m pretty much ignoring the privacy paranoids. Instead, I’m with the many who are enthusiastically striving to create cool Web pages, choosing fame over privacy for their companies and themselves.
Predictor: Metcalfe, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for InfoWorld, Internet pioneer and Ethernet creator Bob Metcalfe writes: ”We’re all supposed to be really, really worried – outraged in fact – about the lack of privacy on the Internet. Well then, why are so many of us busy right now typing some of the most intimate details of our personal lives onto the extremely public pages of the World Wide Web? Violations of privacy will certainly exacerbate next year’s Internet backlash, but me, I’m pretty much ignoring the privacy paranoids. Instead, I’m with the many who are enthusiastically striving to create cool Web pages, choosing fame over privacy for their companies and themselves.”
Biography:Robert Metcalfe developed Ethernet technology at Xerox PARC in 1973 and later developed the networking company 3Comm. He is known for making the exaggerated 1995 prediction that due to an expected overload as people tried to connect, the Internet would “go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” He later jokingly ate his words, pureeing a paper copy of the article including this comment and swallowing it before a group of onlookers. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: November 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Privacy/Surveillance
Name of publication: InfoWorld
Title, headline, chapter name: How to Create Cool World Wide Web Pages Using and Not Using HTML
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000008680631&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=1&Sid=8&RQT=309
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Pinkerton, Bradley Steven