What the nearly-possible technology provides is a set of fantasies about how my wishes for information could be answered, as if by magic my mind could call out to the things of the world and have them answer back … In a thousand ways, applied computing is erasing the boundaries between the insides and the outsides of computers. Increasingly we encounter compound entities, consisting of a physical object or activity and the “shadow” it casts inside a computer.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:In his July 1994 isse of The Network Observer online newsletter, editor Phil Agre writes about an idea he has for the future of the wireless Internet: ”Very often when I see something in a landscape, or on a city street, or in a shop, and wonder ‘what’s that?,’ I find myself starting to invent a device that could tell me the answer. Some of these inventions are scary, like the one that scans a license plate and uses widely available databases to pull up large amounts of personal information about the car’s owner … What the nearly-possible technology provides is a set of fantasies about how my wishes for information could be answered, as if by magic my mind could call out to the things of the world and have them answer back … Such thinking is basic to the technological imagination around computers in general and ‘cyberspace’ in particular … In a thousand ways, applied computing is erasing the boundaries between the insides and the outsides of computers. Increasingly we encounter compound entities, consisting of a physical object or activity and the ‘shadow’ it casts inside a computer.”
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: July 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Wireless Technologies
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: Augmented Reality and Augmented Fantasy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/july-1994.html#augmented
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Kafoure, David