Considering how broadly the new communications landscape is beginning to reshape the movie business, it’s remarkable how little these changes have been reflected in what we see on screen … In the next couple of years, we can expect no end of stock movie plots ported into cyberspace: we’ll get our fill of romantic triangles and monster capers and slasher stories and teen comedies. Hollywood isn’t going to rewrite its whole playbook just because a new medium has emerged, and that’s too bad … we’re still waiting for the artists who can capture the experience of networked communications, who can limn Net life in memorable images.
Predictor: Rosenberg, Scott
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 blurb for Wired magazine, Scott Rosenberg, movie critic for the San Francisco Examiner, writes: ”The important issues raised by globally networked computing – information overload, decentralization, supermobile marketplaces, and destabilization of governments – haven’t registered on Hollywood’s radar. Though a superficial awareness of cyberspace and its implications has begun to penetrate the deepest recesses of movieland decision making, the studios remain surprisingly timid about making films that reflect it in any authentic way. Maybe it’s just that no Hollywood insider has been inspired enough to figure out how to incorporate a digital-age perspective into a movie plot. Or maybe the studios are less eager to make movies open to the full complexities of a technological revolution that’s transforming their own bailiwick along with everyone else’s. Considering how broadly the new communications landscape is beginning to reshape the movie business, it’s remarkable how little these changes have been reflected in what we see on screen. It’s as if the studios hope that, if they just pretend that nothing terribly important is going on, they won’t have to adjust the end-product or evolve their art. In the next couple of years, we can expect no end of stock movie plots ported into cyberspace: we’ll get our fill of romantic triangles and monster capers and slasher stories and teen comedies. Hollywood isn’t going to rewrite its whole playbook just because a new medium has emerged, and that’s too bad. The few writers and directors who do take risks, and who do dare to explore new ways of reflecting the digital revolution, will probably realize great profits and popular acclaim, because their work will resonate with the truth of a changing age … we’re still waiting for the artists who can capture the experience of networked communications, who can limn Net life in memorable images the way ‘2001’ distilled the early space age or ‘Citizen Kane’ caught the soul of a newspaper baron … The world is changing, and the movies risk irrelevance unless they capture what those changes mean.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: TV/Films/Video
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Net Net on Net Films: Crapola
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.07/rosenberg.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney