The new telecommunications and computer technology is changing the traditional relationship between members of the public – at least those with access to personal computers – and authority figures of all kinds. It is arming the former with information once unavailable to the public at large, and putting them in a better position to ask questions, challenge experts, and participate in the decision making – not unlike the enormous changes wrought by the invention of the printing press centuries earlier … Doctors, like government officials, are not gods. The more patients and their families know, the more informed and intelligent their own judgments can be.
Predictor: Grossman, Lawrence K.
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age,” Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News and PBS, writes:”No officials, experts, or medical professionals should be able to stop patients and their families, the people most directly affected, from learning all they could about their disease, including the alternatives for treatment. [Things will change] with the proliferation in the United States of on-line computer information services and increasing access by patients to medical data formerly available only to medical professionals. The new telecommunications and computer technology is changing the traditional relationship between members of the public – at least those with access to personal computers – and authority figures of all kinds. It is arming the former with information once unavailable to the public at large, and putting them in a better position to ask questions, challenge experts, and participate in the decision making – not unlike the enormous changes wrought by the invention of the printing press centuries earlier … Doctors, like government officials, are not gods. The more patients and their families know, the more informed and intelligent their own judgments can be.”
Biography:Lawrence Grossman wrote the book “The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in an Information Age” (Penguin, 1995). The former executive at NBC and PBS urged people to realize that digital communications had altered how things can and should be done. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Medical/Professional
Name of publication: The Electronic Republic (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 28
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne