The prediction, in brief:

In the future it will be everywhere, but it won’t be called cyberculture. It will just be called culture. A few years ago, people used to talk about “the emerging TV culture.” We no longer talk about a “TV culture” today. It’s a given. Someday soon, no one will talk about “emerging cyberculture.” Because it will be a given, too.

Predictor: Stranger

Prediction, in context:

In a 1992 article for The Boston Globe, Nathan Cobb covers what it means to be a “cyberpunk.” He quotes “Stranger” (a hacker), a 17-year-old Miami high school senior who uses an alias. Cobb writes:”Forget for a moment that it was born as a word to describe a dark, morbid, near-future science-fiction movement of the 1980s. ‘Cyberpunk’ is now more commonly a handy term for combining the related cadres of techno-bohemians – primarily hackers, crackers and phreaks – who populate the computer underground. But the word is also used to describe the trappings of this cantankerous, decentralized, and antiestablishment subset that has surfaced in popular culture. It is the hairy-eyed, obsessive wizards of today’s computer netherworld who personify cyberpunk’s foremost futurist theme: the merging of man andy machine … Cyberpunk is only a corner of a much broader cyberculture-at-large, which includes an online worldwide population of middle-aged couch potatoes, wheezy academics, corporate pooh-bahs, government drones, and on and on. ‘In the future it will be everywhere, but it won’t be called cyberculture,” says Stranger, a 17-year-old Miami high school senior who, like most hackers, prefers his computer handle to his real name. ‘It will just be called culture. A few years ago, people used to talk about ‘the emerging TV culture.’ We no longer talk about a ‘TV culture’ today. It’s a given. Someday soon, no one will talk about ’emerging cyberculture.’ Because it will be a given, too.'”

Date of prediction: November 1, 1992

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Boston Globe

Title, headline, chapter name: Cyberpunk: Terminal Chic – Technology is Moving Out of Computers and into the Culture

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=1b6c3032419cccfe8c6279e902526ea8&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVlz-lSlzV&_md5=c4f6ed32ef7e59f0618f6630c1f81950

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty