News assistants [customized search agents] would do an excellent job of creating an information source that is relevant to a particular individual, but by their specialized nature they would also neglect a person’s desire to browse through information relevant to a community. Gathering information as part of a community is an activity performed by different methods and in the service of different goals than when we seek purely personal information. I don’t always want to know about the restaurant that would best suit my tastes – sometimes I want to see everything that’s available in town … Collection of community information is a service newspapers have always performed, and if they can translate that beneficial function to their online counterparts those new information sources will have a better chance of being successful.
Predictor: Ritzenhaler, Gary
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication magazine, Gary Ritzenhaler, assistant editor of the Florida Compass, a student-run “WWW news prototype,” writes:”News assistants [customized search agents] would do an excellent job of creating an information source that is relevant to a particular individual, but by their specialized nature they would also neglect a person’s desire to browse through information relevant to a community. Gathering information as part of a community is an activity performed by different methods and in the service of different goals than when we seek purely personal information. I don’t always want to know about the restaurant that would best suit my tastes – sometimes I want to see everything that’s available in town. It is this ability to provide information important to geographical groups of readers that the current group of Web-based news services fulfills with distinction. Collection of community information is a service newspapers have always performed, and if they can translate that beneficial function to their online counterparts those new information sources will have a better chance of being successful.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication
Title, headline, chapter name: Pyxis Cyberea
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jun/pyxis.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Butler, Lawrence