The word box, as in “set-top box,” carries all the wrong connotations, but here’s the theory. Our insatiable appetite for bandwidth puts cable television currently in the lead position as the broadband provider of information and entertainment services. Cable services today include set-top boxes because only a fraction of TV receivers are cable-ready … In the lucrative sport of making digital television, the computer has so far been seriously “out-boxed” in the first round. But its comeback will be triumphant.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “Being Digital,” Nicholas Negroponte writes: ”The word box, as in ‘set-top box,’ carries all the wrong connotations, but here’s the theory. Our insatiable appetite for bandwidth puts cable television currently in the lead position as the broadband provider of information and entertainment services. Cable services today include set-top boxes because only a fraction of TV receivers are cable-ready … In the lucrative sport of making digital television, the computer has so far been seriously ‘out-boxed’ in the first round. But its comeback will be triumphant.”
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: Internet Appliances
Name of publication: Being Digital (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 3: Bitcasting
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 46
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne