More bits per second is not an intrinsic good. In fact, more bandwidth can have the deleterious effect of swamping people and of allowing machines at the periphery to be dumb.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab writes: ”Judge Greene made a terrible mistake when he barred the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) from entering the information and entertainment industries. It has taken almost 10 years to correct this error. Ironically, the RBOC lobbyists used a gratuitous but effective argument to get into the game. They claimed that unless they became content providers, they could not justify the enormous cost of a new infrastructure (read: fiber). The argument worked. But now some of the telephone companies are forgetting just how specious it was: We don’t know what to do with that bandwidth. We are staring at a $60 billion installed telephone plant of copper and fiber that offers enormous untapped opportunity. Worse, the Clinton administration is buying the wholesale need for, and provision of, bandwidth to maintain a major competitive edge without recognizing what Mother Nature and commercial imperatives already provide. More bits per second is not an intrinsic good. In fact, more bandwidth can have the deleterious effect of swamping people and of allowing machines at the periphery to be dumb.”
Biography:Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and a popular speaker and writer about technologies of the future, wrote one of the 1990s’ best-selling books about the new future of communications, “Being Digital.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Bandwidth
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Debunking Bandwidth
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/negroponte_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney