Three to five more years of Moore’s Law and the PC will be a multimedia machine with some eight times the power and storage capacity at the same price that brought nearly 50 million sales in 1993 and according to Kleskin promises to bring some 55 million unit sales in 1994. At this pace, within four or five years, PC penetration into homes will pass 60 percent. Virtually all these PCs will be connected to networks – most of them with 10 megabits per second or more of bandwidth – and most will run internal buses (linking processors to memory and display) at rates of close to a billion bits a second, ample for full-motion video.
Predictor: Gilder, George
Prediction, in context:In an excerpt from his 1994 book “Life After Television,” George Gilder addresses the future, criticizing the network approach that uses the ideas of television for its basis: ”Three to five more years of Moore’s Law and the PC will be a multimedia machine with some eight times the power and storage capacity at the same price that brought nearly 50 million sales in 1993 and according to Kleskin promises to bring some 55 million unit sales in 1994. At this pace, within four or five years, PC penetration into homes will pass 60 percent. Virtually all these PCs will be connected to networks – most of them with 10 megabits per second or more of bandwidth – and most will run internal buses (linking processors to memory and display) at rates of close to a billion bits a second, ample for full-motion video.”
Biography:George Gilder was a pioneer the formulation of the theory of supply-side economics. In his major book “Microcosm” (1989), he explored the quantum roots of the new electronic technologies. His book “Life After Television,” published by W.W. Norton (1992), is a prophecy of computers and telecommunications displacing the broadcast-TV empire. He followed it with another classic, “Telecosm.” (Futurist/Consultant.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Pipeline/Switching/Hardware
Name of publication: Life After Television
Title, headline, chapter name: Life After Television
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.moliere.byu.edu/digital/life_tv.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney