The prediction, in brief:

To attain wide appeal, the Internet must not simply be efficient, useful, or entertaining: It must present itself in an agreeable manner. The enormous problem for interface design is the fear and hostility humans nourish toward machines and toward a dim recognition of a changing relation toward them, a sharing of space and interdependence. The Internet interface must somehow appear “transparent,” that is to say appear not to be an interface.

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:”The interface has become crucial to the success of the Internet. To attain wide appeal, the Internet must not simply be efficient, useful, or entertaining: It must present itself in an agreeable manner. The enormous problem for interface design is the fear and hostility humans nourish toward machines and toward a dim recognition of a changing relation toward them, a sharing of space and interdependence. The Internet interface must somehow appear ‘transparent,’ that is to say appear not to be an interface, not to come between two alien beings and also seem fascinating, announcing its novelty and encouraging an exploration of the difference of the machinic. The problem of the Internet then is not simply ‘technological’ but paramachinic: To construct a boundary between the human and the machinic that draws the human into the technology, transforming the technology into ‘used equipment’ and the human into a ‘cyborg,’ into one meshing with machines.”

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: Information Infrastructure

Subtopic: Language/Interface/Software

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: Anderson, Janna Quitney