Digital cash can be exchanged for gold or the national currency of your choice in competing tax havens throughout the world or, more importantly, can be spent to procure other goods and services on the net. Imagine the possibilities … [The] exodus of the productive will ultimately touch off a revolution that will result in the practical separation of Commerce and State, a radical, outrageous, earth-shaking development that will be a tremendous threat to the existing social order and will challenge the moral underpinnings of all governments as they are now conceived … Once the new digital infrastructure reaches critical mass it will kick off a worldwide game of “catch us if you can.” When the combined might of nations tries to chase society’s producers of goods and services down the “Information Superhighway” making claims on the fruits of their labor, they will simply disappear into the ether.
Predictor: Frezza, Bill
Prediction, in context:On the web site for DigitaLiberty, co-founder Bill Frezza, a telecommunications industry veteran, takes issue with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s support of the 1993 Digital Telephony bill and presents his new organization’s view of how the world will change in a networked communications age. Frezza writes: ”Advances in the sister technologies of encryption and digital authentication will move this new economic frontier well beyond the reach of any sovereign power. For the first time in history, it will be possible for any two people in any two places on earth to transact business that is absolutely confidential and completely verifiable. Commercial correspondence, contracts, even the delivery of the digital product itself will be scrambled with codes unbreakable by the most motivated and well-equipped authorities … Digital cash can be exchanged for gold or the national currency of your choice in competing tax havens throughout the world or, more importantly, can be spent to procure other goods and services on the net. Imagine the possibilities. Practitioners of laissez faire capitalism throughout the developed and developing world won’t have to struggle to persuade their fellow men to re-architect the basic relationship between state and citizen; they will be able to go off and do it with or without them. This exodus of the productive will ultimately touch off a revolution that will result in the practical separation of Commerce and State, a radical, outrageous, earth-shaking development that will be a tremendous threat to the existing social order and will challenge the moral underpinnings of all governments as they are now conceived … Once the new digital infrastructure reaches critical mass it will kick off a worldwide game of ‘catch us if you can.’ When the combined might of nations tries to chase society’s producers of goods and services down the ‘Information Superhighway’ making claims on the fruits of their labor, they will simply disappear into the ether.”
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: DigitaLiberty
Title, headline, chapter name: The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Lexis-Nexis
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney