The proposed NII contains no … structural feature to ensure that its users will be able to produce and distribute their own products. This degree of many-to-many interactivity is necessary, I suggest, for a truly liberating redistribution of power … Many-to-many communications should be the cornerstone of federal information policy, not the object of guerrilla war.
Predictor: Cappio, James
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 essay for Wired magazine, James Cappio, a New York lawyer, writes: ”The telephone is one-to-one; people use it to produce and communicate their own thoughts. Thus, it seems to provide a model for the NII [National Information Infrastructure]. Yet the proposed NII contains no similar structural feature to ensure that its users will be able to produce and distribute their own products. This degree of many-to-many interactivity is necessary, I suggest, for a truly liberating redistribution of power. I would love to have the Clinton administration to prove me wrong by proposing a revised Communications Act that contains strong protections for many-to-many communications. I’m not counting on it, though. The most the vice president promised at UCLA is nondiscriminatory access – an antitrust concept intended to protect small and start-up information purveyors from the monopoly power of their big brothers. No doubt people will turn the NII to their own communicative ends, to the extent the architecture permits, but I find this to be small comfort. Many-to-many communications should be the cornerstone of federal information policy, not the object of guerrilla war.”
Biography:James Cappio, a New York lawyer, wrote some articles for Wired in the mid-1990s. (Legislator/Politician/Lawyer.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Open Access
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Bad Attitude: Business as Usual on the Infobahn
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/attitude_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney