If there are going to be filters on the Net, they have to come from you and your family, not the government. Even if one believes they should come from the government, that would be impossible. No one can look at a bit stream and tell if it’s pornographic. There might even be two bit streams, neither of which is pornographic until they meet on your screen.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Thomas A. Bass interviews MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte on the 10th anniversary of the Media Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he heads up an effort that spends $25 million a year “engineering the merger of newspapers, television, learning and computers.” Bass asks “What’s your opinion of Congress’s Digital Telephony bill – the ‘wiretapping’ bill – and other examples of the ‘bit police’ trying to control the Net?” and he says Negroponte replies: ”Most of the current legislation or proposed legislation is terrible. But it’s difficult to argue against, unless you want to sound like a pornographer. If there are going to be filters on the Net, they have to come from you and your family, not the government. Even if one believes they should come from the government, that would be impossible. No one can look at a bit stream and tell if it’s pornographic. There might even be two bit streams, neither of which is pornographic until they meet on your screen.”
Biography:Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and a popular speaker and writer about technologies of the future, wrote one of the 1990s’ best-selling books about the new future of communications, “Being Digital.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Censorship/Free Speech
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Being Nicholas: Nicholas Negroponte is the Most Wired Man We Know (and That’s Saying Something)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.11/nicholas_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney