Maybe your car should have a running meter on it, like an odometer only measured in money instead of miles, telling you how much you’ve spent driving it lately … The same idea could be applied to thermostats and electrical devices … Approximate prevailing gasoline prices could be broadcast as well. Insurance companies or home bookkeeping systems could tell your computer how much you’ve paid in premiums. Maintenance costs could be approximated as well. And so forth. All of this information would reside in various databases – some private, some public, some that are free, some that you have to subscribe to. The result, perhaps, could be substantial decreases in all of the ills associated with driving: highway deaths, pollution, wasted time, emotional stress, and so forth.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:The June 1994 issue of The Network Observer, an online newsletter, carries an article titled “Orwellian Privacy” by Phil Agre, TNO editor, who was, at the time, working in the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Agre writes:”[A possible] consumer application of wireless computing would be ways to reveal the costs of consumption … Maybe your car should have a running meter on it, like an odometer only measured in money instead of miles, telling you how much you’ve spent driving it lately … The same idea could be applied to thermostats and electrical devices … Approximate prevailing gasoline prices could be broadcast as well. Insurance companies or home bookkeeping systems could tell your computer how much you’ve paid in premiums. Maintenance costs could be approximated as well. And so forth. All of this information would reside in various databases – some private, some public, some that are free, some that you have to subscribe to. The result, perhaps, could be substantial decreases in all of the ills associated with driving: highway deaths, pollution, wasted time, emotional stress, and so forth.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Wireless Technologies
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: The wireless consumers’ movement
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/june-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne