The prediction, in brief:

I think that for most Wired readers, the golden years are over. [Laughs.] I mean, the little club that they had called the Internet. The little club, all the cute little faces they made [Emoticons]. It’s over. It’s done. Your club is about to be invaded. It’s about to be totally changed. And your snooty little view of the world and “aren’t-I-cool” sentiments are about to go crashing down on your ears. That’ll piss a lot of people off, but that’s good! And I say, Good riddance to the old Internet.

Predictor: Colony, George

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, David Buerger interviews George Colony, president of Forrester Research and the creator of the term “client-server computing,” about the future. After asking about the future of the Internet, Buerger quotes Colony saying:”I think that for most Wired readers, the golden years are over. [Laughs.] I mean, the little club that they had called the Internet. The little club, all the cute little faces they made [Emoticons]. It’s over. It’s done. Your club is about to be invaded. It’s about to be totally changed. And your snooty little view of the world and ‘aren’t-I-cool’ sentiments are about to go crashing down on your ears. That’ll piss a lot of people off, but that’s good! And I say, Good riddance to the old Internet. I was speaking a month ago in San Francisco to a bunch of users. And someone in the audience said, ‘It’s my network. You know, we’re not going to let you own my network.’ I said, ‘Who do you work for?’ He works for the U.S. Army. I said, ‘We paid for that network. That is our network. It’s not your network.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Power Pundit: Super Analyst/Consultant George ‘Golden Guts’ Colony Delivers Some Really Educated Guesses

Quote Type: Paraphrase

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.03/colony_pr.html

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