Some communities will be very local, and some will be local. You won’t be overwhelmed by the number of choices of communities any more than you are now by the telephone system. You’ll look for a group that interests you in general, and then you’ll search through it for the small segment you want to join.
Predictor: Gates, Bill
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Road Ahead,” Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: ”We can be sure we’ll use the highway’s unique capabilities to help us find communities of others with common interests … I recently visited Africa and took a lot of pictures of chimpanzees. If the information highway were available now, I would put out a message saying that if anyone else from the safari wanted to exchange photographs, he or she should put them on the same bulletin board where I had posted my chimpanzee photos. I would be able to set it up so only fellow safari members could have access to that bulletin board … Some communities will be very local, and some will be local. You won’t be overwhelmed by the number of choices of communities any more than you are now by the telephone system. You’ll look for a group that interests you in general, and then you’ll search through it for the small segment you want to join.”
Biography:Bill Gates, the most influential technology entrepreneur of the late 20th century, was the primary author of the prediction-packed 1995 book “The Road Ahead” and is the founder and CEO of Microsoft Corporation. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: The Road Ahead (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 10: Plugged In At Home
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 209, 211
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne