The growth of personal computers is happening so rapidly that the future open-architecture television is the PC, period. The set-top box will be a credit-card-size insert that turns your PC into an electronic gateway for cable, telephone, or satellite. In other words, there is no TV-set industry in the future. It is nothing more or less than a computer industry: displays filled with tons of memory and lots of processing power.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Being Digital,” Nicholas Negroponte writes: ”The growth of personal computers is happening so rapidly that the future open-architecture television is the PC, period. The set-top box will be a credit-card-size insert that turns your PC into an electronic gateway for cable, telephone, or satellite. In other words, there is no TV-set industry in the future. It is nothing more or less than a computer industry: displays filled with tons of memory and lots of processing power. Some of those computer products may be ones with which you are more likely to have a 10-foot, rather than 18-inch, experience, more often in a group than as an individual. But any way you look at it, it’s still a computer.”
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: February 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Internet Appliances
Name of publication: Being Digital (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 3: Bitcasting
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 47
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne