Like the Oz stories, the tales of the Information Age are fanciful … Much of the futurists’ promise is humbug, a deceitful fiction, an instrumental contrivance developed with the assistance of creative people in marking and public relations departments. It is true that the future is unknown, but the evidence available to us in the present makes it clear that the promises of the Information Age are at the very least substantially overdrawn, if not outright fabrications.
Predictor: Gandy, Oscar H.
Prediction, in context:In this 1994 article in the Phi Kappa Phi journal National Forum, Professor Oscar Gandy uses L. Frank Baum’s story of “Oz” as the underlying metaphoric hook for his concerns about the Internet. Gandy writes: ”Writing at the turn of the century, L. Frank Baum provided millions of children, and no doubt good many adults, great pleasure through his stories about the land of Oz … Whatever else we know about Baum’s wonderful tale, it is clearly a story about illusion, deception, and sleight of hand. It is my contention that much of what we think about the Information Age, and the information superhighway that is supposed to take us there, has been heavily influenced by similar forms of craft. And further, I suggest that these illusions serve the same kinds of instrumental purposes in political economy as they do in popular fiction. Like the Oz stories, the tales of the Information Age are fanciful; they describe wonders that challenge the imagination. They are utopian in that they promise an end to adversity, discrimination, and want. Evil is destroyed, banished, contained, or transformed as if by magic. Whereas the fictional characters of childhood stories meld witches with water, or wizard/therapists fashion silk hearts for the empty chests of men of tin, the characters in the rosy scenarios of futurists do more with less, and every exchange in the market makes everyone better off, because all are fully informed … We are bound to discover that much of the futurists’ promise is humbug, a deceitful fiction, an instrumental contrivance developed with the assistance of creative people in marking and public relations departments. It is true that the future is unknown, but the evidence available to us in the present makes it clear that the promises of the Information Age are at the very least substantially overdrawn, if not outright fabrications.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: National Forum
Title, headline, chapter name: The Information Superhighway as the Yellow Brick Road
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000005878683&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=5&Sid=6&RQT=309
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney