Who wants to participate in the kind of sterile, cartoony world that companies like CompuServe and Prodigy are doomed to create? Perhaps a few … but the rest will want to move into grittier, less-planned online worlds. This new digital landscape will not offer architects or urban planners the jobs they’re really angling for.
Predictor: Steinberg, Steve G.
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article listing tech items and issues that are currently being hyped, Steve Steinberg of Wired magazine writes: ”Build an interactive digital world, and they will come. At least that’s what the online services seem to be hoping as the trickle of announcements of multiuser, graphical, immersive worlds becomes a flood. But the question is: Who wants to participate in the kind of sterile, cartoony world that companies like CompuServe and Prodigy are doomed to create? Perhaps a few – just as there are people willing to live in Orange County, California – but the rest will want to move into grittier, less-planned online worlds. This new digital landscape will not offer architects or urban planners the jobs they’re really angling for.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Hype List: Multi-User Games
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.08/hypelist.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney