The prediction, in brief:

In the process of scaling, is there a cusp, a threshold at which the Net will break down and have to be rebuilt? I think the Net is scaling very well. Because of the way it was designed, I don’t think it will come to its knees and crash. I see it as very organic in the way it’s capable of living and reproducing itself.

Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Thomas A. Bass interviews MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte on the 10th anniversary of the Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he heads up an effort that spends $25 million a year “engineering the merger of newspapers, television, learning and computers.” Bass asks “What comes after the Net?” and he says Negroponte replies:”I don’t have the answer because there’s something wrong with the question. I could say it’s going to be biologically composed computers or some other technical breakthrough likely to happen in the next 20 years. But I think you’re asking a different question: In the process of scaling, is there a cusp, a threshold at which the Net will break down and have to be rebuilt? I think the Net is scaling very well. Because of the way it was designed, I don’t think it will come to its knees and crash. I see it as very organic in the way it’s capable of living and reproducing itself.”

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, 1995

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/nicholas_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney