Like dogs in heat, broadband pundits are sniffing all the political opportunities for high-bandwidth networks as if doing so were a national imperative or civil right. In fact, unlimited bandwidth can have the paradoxical and negative effect of swamping people with too many bits and of allowing machines at the periphery to be needlessly dumb. Unlimited bandwidth is hardly wrong or bad to have, but like free sex, it is not necessarily good either. Do we really want or need all those bits?
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Being Digital,” Nicholas Negroponte writes: ”Like dogs in heat, broadband pundits are sniffing all the political opportunities for high-bandwidth networks as if doing so were a national imperative or civil right. In fact, unlimited bandwidth can have the paradoxical and negative effect of swamping people with too many bits and of allowing machines at the periphery to be needlessly dumb. Unlimited bandwidth is hardly wrong or bad to have, but like free sex, it is not necessarily good either. Do we really want or need all those bits?”
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: February 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Bandwidth
Name of publication: Being Digital (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 2: Debunking Bandwidth
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 28
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne