As the gathering and production of news becomes digitally based, the marginal costs of delivering material gathered, but not printed, will be minimal, and the task for a digital Times may become one of finding ways by which different readers can project their criteria of interest and importance on all the news the Times can gather, so that each reader can find all the news that he or she thinks fit to read.
Predictor: McClintock, Robert
Prediction, in context:In 1995, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology commissioned a series of white papers on various issues related to networking technologies. The department convened the authors for a workshop in November 1995 to discuss the implications. The following statement is taken from one of the white papers, “Renewing the Progressive Contract with Posterity: On the Social Construction of Digital Learning Communities,” by Robert McClintock, the director of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University. McClintock writes:”‘All the news that’s fit to print’ implies not only that the Times excludes a lot, but also that this exclusion is legitimate, for everything that is somehow fit makes it into the paper. Clearly under the constraints of print journalism, the Times does a reasonable job at being a comprehensive paper of record. Yet contrary to slogan, many readers undoubtedly have criteria of what is fit for inclusion in a record relevant to their interests different from those of the paper’s editors. As the gathering and production of news becomes digitally based, the marginal costs of delivering material gathered, but not printed, will be minimal, and the task for a digital Times may become one of finding ways by which different readers can project their criteria of interest and importance on all the news the Times can gather, so that each reader can find all the news that he or she thinks fit to read.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Journalism/Media
Name of publication: The Future of Networking Technologies for Learning
Title, headline, chapter name: Renewing the Progressive Contract with Posterity: On the Social Construction of Digital Learning Communities
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney