It is the new standard by which literacy must be judged, and for a time whole nations, but perhaps for government elites, will in effect be made newly illiterate. They need not remain so: This is easier to overcome than hunger or drought. New tasks for future Peace Corps: wire up the global village.
Predictor: Coover, Robert
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 New York Times article, writer George Johnson quotes Robert Coover. Johnson writes: ”Someday, the visionaries tell us, we will be able to communicate with just about anybody by sending an electronic message; no matter where they are, the bundle of bits will find them … someday perhaps, but not yet … when we asked four writers to give us their visions of the information future … we had to resort to primitive telephone calls to contact Robert Coover, who runs a hyperfiction workshop at Brown University …[Coover said:] ‘Will everyone have equal and universal access to this magical new realm? No, they will not. But the gap between haves and have-nots, already almost unimaginably vast in our time, will not necessarily widen. Digitalization, like the Gutenberg technology before it, has so far had a democratizing effect on cultural exchange, greatly empowering the individual user, and it is easy enough to learn that small children can make full use of it. It can spread as rapidly as there is human will to do so. Making it more universally accessible is a comtemporary political issue in the way that rural electrification and telephone line laying were earlier in the century. Certainly it is the new standard by which literacy must be judged, and for a time whole nations, but perhaps for government elites, will in effect be made newly illiterate. They need not remain so: This is easier to overcome than hunger or drought. New tasks for future Peace Corps: wire up the global village.”
Biography:Robert Coover was one of the pioneers of online literature. He has been a teacher of experimental courses in hypertext and multimedia narrative at Brown University. His 1992 essay on hypertext in the New York Times Book Review, “The End of Books,” described and publicized the idea of digital literature. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Digital Divide
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: We Are the Wired: Some Views On the Fiberoptic Ties That Bind
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=2a36a194c9a458e14d8de9643883255d&_docnum=4&wchp=dGLbVlb-lSlAl&_md5=75e1bac47fdc16cf2dea2332a2db34a9
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney