The Network is spreading across China … We’d like to think of it as the grassroots of democracy, but the Chinese are just as apt to think of it as a finely engineered snare for tying the whole country together even more firmly than its predecessor, the human Net of the Red Guards … Sometime within the next couple of decades, I’m expecting to turn on CNN (or BBC if I can get it) and see a jittery home videotape smuggled out of South China, showing a heap of smashed and burning cellphones, satellite dishes, and television sets piled up in a public square in Shenzhen, and, as backdrop, a giant mural portraying a vigorous new leader in Beijing.
Predictor: Stephenson, Neal
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article about technology and networking developments in China for Wired magazine, Neal Stephenson writes: ”Now (or so the argument goes), any nation that wants a modern economy has to have information technology – so economic modernization will inevitably lead to political reform, right? I went to China expecting to see that process in action. I looked everywhere for hardy electronic frontierfolk, using their modems and fax machines to push the Communists back into their holes, and I asked dang near everyone I met about how communications technology was changing Chinese culture. None of them knew what … I was talking about … Our concept of cyberspace, cyber-culture, and cyber-everything is, more than we care to realize, a European idea, rooted in Deuteronomy, Socrates, Galileo, Jefferson, Edison, Jobs, Wozniak, glasnost, perestroika, and the United Federation of Planets … During [a two-week trip to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai during September ’93] I tried to get some sense of how the Chinese perceived the influence of technology – particularly digital technology – on their culture. The answer is that this issue hasn’t occurred to the Chinese yet, and probably never will, because it basically stems from a Western, post-Enlightenment perspective … The Network is spreading across China … We’d like to think of it as the grassroots of democracy, but the Chinese are just as apt to think of it as a finely engineered snare for tying the whole country together even more firmly than its predecessor, the human Net of the Red Guards. Looking at all the little enterprises that have sprung up in Shenzhen to write software and entertain visiting spacemen, it’s easy to think that it’s all the beginning of something permanent. But a longer historical perspective suggests that it’s only a matter of time before the northerners come pouring down through the mountain passes to whip their troublesome southern cousins back into line. I’m no China expert. But everything I saw there tells me that, in China, culture wins over technology every time. Sometime within the next couple of decades, I’m expecting to turn on CNN (or BBC if I can get it) and see a jittery home videotape smuggled out of South China, showing a heap of smashed and burning cellphones, satellite dishes, and television sets piled up in a public square in Shenzhen, and, as backdrop, a giant mural portraying a vigorous new leader in Beijing.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: In the Kingdom of Mao Bell: A Billion Chinese Are Using New Technology to Create the Fastest-Growing Economy on the Planet. But While the Information Wants to be Free, Do They?
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.02/mao.bell_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney