Computers were feared, would be the Big Brother’s tool, instruments of oppression, invaders of privacy, displacers of persons. All those dangers are still with us, and all those fears. The use of bar codes and scanners poses great challenges to a free society. But up until now, at least, computers have shown themselves to be capable of empowering people in ways we did not foresee 20 years ago.
Predictor: Donham, Parker Barss
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 paper presented at the Symposium on Free Speech and Privacy in the Information Age, Parker Barss Donham, a staff writer for the Canadian edition of Reader’s Digest magazine, writes: ”I remember a New Yorker cartoon from sometime in the 1960s or ’70s, when computers were just getting a foothold in society. It showed a huge computer – an old Univac with whirring tape drives – sitting on a hilltop. A mob of farmers were rushing up the hill, attacking the computer with scythes and pitchforks. That’s the image non-technical people had of computers, isn’t it? Computers were feared, would be the Big Brother’s tool, instruments of oppression, invaders of privacy, displacers of persons. All those dangers are still with us, and all those fears. The use of bar codes and scanners poses great challenges to a free society. But up until now, at least, computers have shown themselves to be capable of empowering people in ways we did not foresee 20 years ago.”
Date of prediction: November 24, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Symposium on Free Speech and Privacy in the Information Age
Title, headline, chapter name: An Unshackled Internt: If Joe Howe Were Designing Cyberspace
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
gopher://nsight.mcmaster.ca/00/org/efc/doc/spsf/donham.txt
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Dorne, Jay