The question of the bit police is a big one, and we know it’s big, because we’re watching the legal system flop around like a half-dead fish on the dock. They don’t know how to handle the new technology.
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: ”The question of the bit police is a big one, and we know it’s big, because we’re watching the legal system flop around like a half-dead fish on the dock. They don’t know how to handle the new technology. Take the following example. Last January, a Muslim cleric asked the United States government to extradite Michael Jackson and Madonna to stand trial in Tehran for obscenity. You laugh. But at roughly the same time, a court in Memphis, Tennessee, was convicting Robert and Carleen Thomas, who operate a commercial bulletin board system in Milpitas, California, for violating the community standards in Memphis. The case is being appealed, but the Thomases were sentenced to about three years apiece in federal prison.”
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: Crime/Fraud/Terrorism
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