The mistakes of the French Revolution are being repeated. On the Internet, it is possible to publish anonymously or pseudonymously and more widely than ever before. As a result, the responsibility for organizing information shifts from the writer to the reader. How can you know what to believe? This is a time of great danger.
Predictor: Hesse, Carla
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for The New York Times, John Markoff writes about computers and literacy, quoting Carla Hesse. Markoff writes:”Carla Hesse, an associate professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, sees the Internet – with its millions and millions of electronic publishers – as a throwback to the anarchy of the French revolution. ‘Publishing in the traditional paper world is both a form of stability and also a fixed memory for our society,’ she said. We like to think we can put a certain amount of credence in what we read in a newspaper, magazine or book because it was written and edited according to some standards. The question is, of course, who gets to set the standards? French revolutionaries like Condorcet experimented with absolute freedom of the press during the first years of the Revolution. But after a deluge of anonymous publications of dubious veracity, the revolutionaries revised their dreams of totally deregulated, authorless free exchange. By 1973, Ms. Hesse said, legislation emerged to hold authors accountable for what they published. Today, she believes, ‘the mistakes of the French Revolution are being repeated. On the Internet, it is possible to publish anonymously or pseudonymously and more widely than ever before. As a result, the responsibility for organizing information shifts from the writer to the reader. How can you know what to believe? This is a time of great danger,’ she said. ‘When the samizdat includes digital video, which can be seamlessly altered and rearranged, the threat is only compounded.'”
Date of prediction: March 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: The Rise and Swift Fall of Cyber Literacy
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Criticisms/fall_of_cyberliteracy.paper
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney