Nation states are at a loss when faced with a global communication network. Technology has taken a turn that defies the character of power of modern governments.
Predictor: Poster, Mark
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Second Media Age,” Mark Poster, a member of the humanities faculty at the University of California at Irvine, writes: ”In some ways the Internet undermines the territoriality of the nation state: messages in cyberspace are not easily delimited in Newtonian space, rendering borders ineffective … So desperate are national governments, confronted by the disorder of the Internet, that schemes to monitor all messages are afoot, such as the American government’s idea to monopolize encryption with a ‘Clipper Chip’ or the FBI’s insistence on building surveillance mechanisms into the structure of the information superhighway. Nation states are at a loss when faced with a global communication network. Technology has taken a turn that defies the character of power of modern governments.”
Biography:Mark Poster wrote the paper “Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere” in 1995 while teaching at the University of California, Irvine. He also wrote about technology for Wired magazine. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Democracy
Name of publication: The Second Media Age
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter Two: Postmodern Virtualities
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/mposter/writings/internet.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas