The prediction, in brief:

The Internet has always been a store-and-forward medium organized around e-mail, newsgroup postings, ftp sites, and Web pages; its primary focus is on content and efficiency. From the point of view of this culture, the fate of the Net hangs on the battle between “clueless newbies” drowning the Net in a flood of meaningless babble and the in-groups who understand the importance (as much spiritual as practical) of not wasting bandwidth.

Predictor: Hapgood, Fred

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Fred Hapgood covers the issues surrounding Internet telephony. Hapgood writes:”For reasons that run straight to its technological roots, the Internet has always been a store-and-forward medium organized around e-mail, newsgroup postings, ftp sites, and Web pages; its primary focus is on content and efficiency. From the point of view of this culture, the fate of the Net hangs on the battle between ‘clueless newbies’ drowning the Net in a flood of meaningless babble and the in-groups who understand the importance (as much spiritual as practical) of not wasting bandwidth.”

Biography:

Fred Hapgood took on the role of moderator of the Nanosystems Interest Group at MIT and wrote a number of articles for Wired and other tech publications of the early 1990s. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Bandwidth

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: IPhone: Will Telephony on the Net Bring the Telcos to Their Knees? Or Will it Allow Them to Take Over the Internet? (And, Oh, Yes, It’s Damn Hard to Tap)

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.10/iphone_pr.html

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