[The new-user] group represents our biggest challenge: to find ways to let them educate themselves in the parking lots of cyberspace, rather than on the main roads where other users are trying to get work done … It only takes a percentage of a percentage of new, well-meaning but ill-directed users (not to mention the less-than-well-meaning) to disrupt the activities of thousands, even millions, of regular Internet users.
Predictor: Dern, Daniel
Prediction, in context:The 1995 book “Public Access to the Internet,” edited by Brian Kahin and James Keller carries the chapter, “Meeting the Challenges of Business and End-User Communities on the Internet: What They Want, What they Need, What They’re Doing” by Daniel Dern, an Internet analyst and the author of “The Internet Guide for New Users” and “The Internet Business Handbook.” He writes: ”[In my experience with] those completely new to the on-line experience … their expectations and assumptions reveal how little sense the general populace has of information and library science realities, of what is and is not on-line, and what you can and can’t do easily. This group represents our biggest challenge: to find ways to let them educate themselves in the parking lots of cyberspace, rather than on the main roads where other users are trying to get work done. .. It only takes a percentage of a percentage of new, well-meaning but ill-directed users (not to mention the less-than-well-meaning) to disrupt the activities of thousands, even millions, of regular Internet users.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Digital Divide
Name of publication: Public Access to the Internet (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Meeting the Challenges of Business and End-User Communities on the Internet: What They Want, What they Need, What They’re Doing
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 211
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne