“Virtual” communities may turn out to be the most exciting benefit of the consumer-information revolution.
Predictor: Miller, Thomas E.
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for American Demographics magazine, Thomas Miller, vice president of the emerging technologies group of Find/SVP in Ithaca, N.Y., writes about general trends indicated by the first annual American Information User Survey, a study of eight focus groups followed by a survey of 2,000 households, plus 200 online user households. Miller writes: ”‘Virtual’ communities may turn out to be the most exciting benefit of the consumer-information revolution. Online services are already creating tele-democracies, tele-clubs, tele-government services, tele-insurance forms and similar, time-saving, paper-saving and cost-saving forms of organization and social intercourse. Obviously, critical issues related to privacy, copyright and the potential for amplifying information overload remain to be solved before these benefits arrive. But some of these fears may be overstated, as fears often are at the start of a revolution.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: American Demographics
Title, headline, chapter name: New Markets for Information
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=92720e236045eca68bb019de4858751a
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney