Information has now become a form of garbage. We don’t know what to do with it, have no control over it, don’t know how to get rid of it. In the fact of this, we propose to spend billions on a super-information network. To do what? Instead of 60 TV channels, we’ll have 500, maybe a thousand. We’ll have access to more entertainment, more sports, more commercials, more news – faster, more conveniently, in more diverse forms. We will, in other words, flood our lives with that from which we are already drowning.
Predictor: Postman, Neil
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 New York Times article, writer George Johnson quotes Neil Postman. 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 … the cultural critic Neil Postman, author of ‘Technopoly’ and ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death,’ … replied by fax … [Postman said:] ‘In the 19th century, beginning with the invention of telegraphy and photography in the 1840s, humankind attacked the problem of how to get information to people fast, conveniently, in various forms and in great quantities. It took about a hundred years to solve that problem satisfactorily, but in the process new and unprecedented difficulties were created. Information, once a valued resource in solving problems of our material and psychic worlds, became a cheaply available commodity, to be bought and sold. What was important was mixed with the trivial. The connection between information and action was severed as people came to know of many things about which they could do nothing. The flood of information undermined and seemingly made irrelevant traditional sources of authority. A sense of what things mean was lost as information poured in from uncountable sources, directed at no one in particular, in unassimilable quantities. We moved from a culture burdened by information scarcity to one burdened by information glut. The fact is that information has now become a form of garbage. We don’t know what to do with it, have no control over it, don’t know how to get rid of it. In the fact of this, we propose to spend billions on a super-information network. To do what? Instead of 60 TV channels, we’ll have 500, maybe a thousand. We’ll have access to more entertainment, more sports, more commercials, more news – faster, more conveniently, in more diverse forms. We will, in other words, flood our lives with that from which we are already drowning. This is supposed to be our response to the challenge of the 21st century. It is, in fact, a looking back, not ahead; a 19th-century solution proposed by information junkies who have no sense of purpose and meaning, and who require distractions from confronting their emptiness.”
Biography:Neil Postman was a professor at NYU and prolific writer and speaker on the negative impacts of technology and the media on society. He wrote the book “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology” (1992). (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Information Overload
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