Sex on the Internet, she maintains, might actually be good for young people. “[Cyberspace] is a safe place in which to explore the forbidden and the taboo. It offers the possibility for genuine, unembarrassed conversations about accurate as well as fantasy images of sex.”
Predictor: Meyer, Carlin
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Time magazine, Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes about “Marketing Pornography on the Information Superhighway,” a research article based on research completed at Carnegie-Mellon by Martin Rimm. He quotes Carlin Meyer, a professor at New York Law School. Elmer-DeWitt writes: ”Historians say it should come as no surprise that the Internet – the most democratic of media – would lead to new calls for censorship. The history of pornography and efforts to suppress it are inextricably bound up with the rise of new media and the emergence of democracy … On the Internet, anybody can be Bob Guccione. [Guccione was the publisher of a controversial pornographic magazine popular at the time.] That might not be a bad idea, says Carlin Meyer, a professor at New York Law School … She argues that if you don’t like the images of sex the pornographers offer, the appropriate response is not to suppress them but to overwhelm them with healthier, more realistic ones. Sex on the Internet, she maintains, might actually be good for young people. ‘[Cyberspace] is a safe place in which to explore the forbidden and the taboo,’ she writes. ‘It offers the possibility for genuine, unembarrassed conversations about accurate as well as fantasy images of sex.'”
Date of prediction: July 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Pornography
Name of publication: Time
Title, headline, chapter name: On a Screen Near You: Cyberporn – It’s Popular, Pervasive and Surprisingly Perverse, According to the First Survey of Online Erotica. And There’s No Way to Stamp it Out
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web2.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/166/445/35880842w2/purl=rc1_EAIM_0_A17128890&dyn=6!xrn_27_0_A17128890?sw_aep=ncliveec
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney