The worst of the “roadkill” aspects of the superhighway will be for libraries.
Predictor: Wolfe, Gene
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 speech for the American Library Association Annual Conference in Miami, Gene Wolfe quotes author and cyberspace commentator Bruce Sterling in the course of making his own tongue-in-cheek point about the Internet. Wolfe writes: ”Not everyone is infatuated with this sort of technology. I, for one, am not. Rather, I am fascinated by the hold it has upon devotees, and how little real, usable capability it has given them to date. For my final quote, here’s one of the best cyberpunks, Bruce Sterling: ‘Computer bulletin boards excel at minor aspects of social housekeeping, such as swapping addresses, spreading headlines, breeding rumors, and, especially, exchanging insults.’ I think that makes very plain that the worst of the ‘roadkill’ aspects of the superhighway will be for libraries. In place of that bewildered-looking man who wanders up to you and asks you where you keep the snipe-hunting books, you’re going to have hundreds (I’m lying here, because I’m afraid that you wouldn’t believe me if I said thousands) of inquiries, inputs, and complaints, nearly all of which will have to be dealt with in some way by somebody.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Libraries/Databases
Name of publication: American Library Association
Title, headline, chapter name: Libraries on the Superhighway
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Printed in Information Technology and LibrariesVol. 14, Issue 4, Page 219ISSN: 07309295
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Uhlfelder, Evelyn C.