The Internet has vast potential to expand the audience for works of the literary imagination; and not only to expand access but also opportunities for interactivity, and for building communities of creative minds that could not exist otherwise. It’s a lovely picture, one I’d like to believe in. But I know it is more likely that the Internet will become a vast cyberspace mall, every bit as commercialized as any other mass medium in a free-market society … It is … important that we do not surrender cyberspace and the new media to the purely market-driven forces of late-20th-century multinational capitalism. There are other values – values which cannot be measured in monetary units – that will survive only if we vigilantly carve out a space for them to breathe.
Predictor: Stephenson, Wen
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 essay for the Chicago Review, Wen Stephenson fashions his response to a collection of Internet-inspired essays by Sven Birkerts titled “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.” Stephenson writes: ”It is becoming clearer that the Internet has vast potential to expand the audience for works of the literary imagination; and not only to expand access but also opportunities for interactivity, and for building communities of creative minds that could not exist otherwise. It’s a lovely picture, one I’d like to believe in. But I know it is more likely that the Internet will become a vast cyberspace mall, every bit as commercialized as any other mass medium in a free-market society. And yet, if it’s true, as Auden put it, that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ – at least not within the realm of an expanding and virtually untapped marketplace – it is nevertheless also true that individuals do make things happen. And I will maintain surely Birkerts would agree with me here – that literature, as a means of communication, has the power to make something happen within individuals. For this reason, it is all the more important that we do not surrender cyberspace and the new media to the purely market-driven forces of late-20th-century multinational capitalism. There are other values – values which cannot be measured in monetary units – that will survive only if we vigilantly carve out a space for them to breathe.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Chicago Review
Title, headline, chapter name: The Message is the Medium: A Reply to Sven Birkerts and the ‘Gutenberg Elegies’
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://weblinks2.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ug=dbs+1+ln+en%2Dus+sid+BDFA95F0%2D9D43%2D4554%2D9B48%2D2A397F393BAE%40Sessionmgr2+70BB&_uh=btn+N+db+afh+idb+afhish+jdb+afhjnh+op+phrase+ss+ID++CRV+EE78&_us=bs+JN++%22Chicago++Review%22++and++DT++19951201+ds+JN++%22Chicago++Review%22++and++DT++19951201+dstb+KS+fcl+Aut+ri+KAAACB1D00029048+sm+KS+EF18&cf=1&fn=1&rn=7
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty