On the information highway, rich electronic documents will be able to do things no piece of paper can. The highway’s powerful database technology will allow them to be indexed and retrieved using interactive exploration. It will be extremely cheap and easy to distribute them. In short, these new digital documents will replace many printed paper ones because they will be able to help us in new ways. But not for quite some time. The paper-based book, magazine, or newspaper still have a lot of advantages over its digital counterpart. To read a digital document you need an information appliance such as a personal computer. A book is small, lightweight, high-resolution, and inexpensive compared to the cost of a computer. For at least a decade it won’t be as convenient to read a long, sequential document on a computer screen as on paper. The first digital documents to achieve widespread use will do so by offering new functionality rather than simply duplicating the older medium.
Predictor: Gates, Bill
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Road Ahead,” Microsoft CEO Bill Gates writes: ”Future digitally stored documents will include pictures, audio, programming instructions for interactivity, and animation, or a combination of these and other elements. On the information highway, rich electronic documents will be able to do things no piece of paper can. The highway’s powerful database technology will allow them to be indexed and retrieved using interactive exploration. It will be extremely cheap and easy to distribute them. In short, these new digital documents will replace many printed paper ones because they will be able to help us in new ways. But not for quite some time. The paper-based book, magazine, or newspaper still have a lot of advantages over its digital counterpart. To read a digital document you need an information appliance such as a personal computer. A book is small, lightweight, high-resolution, and inexpensive compared to the cost of a computer. For at least a decade it won’t be as convenient to read a long, sequential document on a computer screen as on paper. The first digital documents to achieve widespread use will do so by offering new functionality rather than simply duplicating the older medium.”
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: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: The Road Ahead (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 6: The Content Revolution
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 112, 113
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne