The NII would scarcely be worth building if it offered no more than 500 channels of MTV, no matter how holographic, ambient, and jacked in to the gills. Its real payoff, its visionary promise, would be the possibility of an “Athens without slaves” or a “Jeffersonian democracy” in which people can provide information as easily as they consume it. A networked world offers the possibility of many-to-many communication, permitting widely separated individuals to bind themselves into collectives.
Predictor: Cappio, James
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 essay for Wired magazine, James Cappio, a New York lawyer, writes: ”The NII would scarcely be worth building if it offered no more than 500 channels of MTV, no matter how holographic, ambient, and jacked in to the gills. Its real payoff, its visionary promise, would be the possibility of an ‘Athens without slaves’ or a ‘Jeffersonian democracy’ in which people can provide information as easily as they consume it. A networked world offers the possibility of many-to-many communication, permitting widely separated individuals to bind themselves into collectives.”
Biography:James Cappio, a New York lawyer, wrote some articles for Wired in the mid-1990s. (Legislator/Politician/Lawyer.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Bad Attitude: Business as Usual on the Infobahn
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/attitude_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney