When a delivery system that looks more like the Internet is used in the general world of entertainment, the planet becomes a single media machine … In the next few decades, bits that describe other bits, tables of contents, indexes, and summaries will proliferate in digital broadcasting … The result will be a bit stream with so much header information that you computer really can help you deal with the massive amounts of content … The bits about the bits change broadcasting totally. They give you a handle by which to grab what interests you and provide the network with a means to ship them into any nook or cranny that wants them. The networks will finally learn what networking is about.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Being Digital,” Nicholas Negroponte writes:”When a delivery system that looks more like the Internet is used in the general world of entertainment, the planet becomes a single media machine … The problem is how to cope with it. The best way to deal with a massive amount of available television is not to deal with it at all. Let an agent do that … For the next 30 years or so, machine understanding of video content will be limited to very specific domains, like face recognition at ATM machines … In the next few decades, bits that describe other bits, tables of contents, indexes, and summaries will proliferate in digital broadcasting … The result will be a bit stream with so much header information that you computer really can help you deal with the massive amounts of content … The bits about the bits change broadcasting totally. They give you a handle by which to grab what interests you and provide the network with a means to ship them into any nook or cranny that wants them. The networks will finally learn what networking is about.”
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: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Being Digital (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 14: Prime Time Is My Time
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 178-180
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne