The prediction, in brief:

We ought to get over our dazzlement with modern technology and address technologists differently. Fecund telecosms are all well and good, we ought to tell them, but while you’re up would you mind arranging for the trains to run on time? … Modern technology does not doom the city, because it does not change human nature.

Predictor: Gelernter, David

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 article for City Journal, David Gelernter writes:”Peter Huber tells us, in a fascinating City Journal article (Winter 1995) that Manhattan is a ‘cyber-quasar pumping out vast amounts of energy in the form of radio waves and glass-encapsulated laser light … Few New Yorkers have any real awareness of the amazingly fecund telecosm seething under their feet.’ … I think Huber is right, but I also think we ought to get over our dazzlement with modern technology and address technologists differently. Fecund telecosms are all well and good, we ought to tell them, but while you’re up would you mind arranging for the trains to run on time? The irony is that the eager technologists Huber lauds are exactly the ones who could play a key role in reviving cities in general and New York in particular – except that the problems of the mere physical city are ones most technologists don’t understand or care to solve. Instead of rallying them, thinkers like Huber and politicians like Newt Gingrich and Al Gore encourage them to believe that a brave new cyber-civilization can arise on the rotten footings of our present-day one. But it can’t. Responsible technologists would use their art to fix those footings first … Modern technology does not doom the city, because it does not change human nature. Besides, as Huber notes, ‘every important sphere of activity will always have a clearinghouse, an exchange, a central office, a hub.’ Meaning a city.”

Biography:

David Gelernter, a Yale University scientist, was the author of “Mirror Worlds,” “1939: The Lost World of the Fair” and “The Muse in the Machine.” (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: Virtual Communities

Name of publication: City Journal

Title, headline, chapter name: Bring Back the Urban Visionaries: Why Have the Best Technology Brains Stopped Trying to Solve Urban Problems?

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.city-journal.org/html/5_3_bring_back.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney