Every machine you see here will be trucked out and buried in a landfill, and never spoken of again, within a dozen years … The values are what matters. The values are the only things that last, the only things that *can* last. Hack the hardware, not the Constitution. Hold on tight to what matters, and just hack the rest. I used to think that cyberspace was 50 years away. What I thought was 50 years away, was only 10 years away. And what I thought was 10 years away – it was already here. I just wasn’t aware of it yet.
Predictor: Sterling, Bruce
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 speech for the National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education in Washington, D.C., author William Gibson makes the following remarks: ”There are innovations coming, and coming fast, that will make the hottest tech exposition you see here seem as quaint as gaslamps and Victorian magic-lanterns. Every machine you see here will be trucked out and buried in a landfill, and never spoken of again, within a dozen years. That so-called cutting-edge hardware here will crumble just the way old fax-paper crumbles. The values are what matters. The values are the only things that last, the only things that *can* last. Hack the hardware, not the Constitution. Hold on tight to what matters, and just hack the rest. I used to think that cyberspace was 50 years away. What I thought was 50 years away, was only 10 years away. And what I thought was 10 years away – it was already here. I just wasn’t aware of it yet.”
Biography:Bruce Sterling, a writer, consultant and science fiction enthusiast, wrote or co-wrote “Schismatrix,” “The Hacker Crackdown” and “The Difference Engine” and edited “Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology.” In the 1990s, he wrote tech articles for Fortune, Harper’s, Details, Whole Earth Review and Wired, where he was a contributing writer from its founding. He published the nonfiction book “Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years” in 2002. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: May 13, 1993
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: National Academy of Sciences
Title, headline, chapter name: Literary Freeware: Not for Commercial Use
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Cyberpunk/William_Gibson/sterling_gibson_nas.speeches
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney