What might we say … of a time when super-fast computers, singly and together, generate and sustain totally absorbing visual worlds, populated and teeming with avatars and scoundrels and gigantic, dizzying databases tilting like drunken electric pyramids…when, in the silicon banks of machines whirring in stuffy rooms there breathe whole alternative cities, the sites of a delirious new urbanism entire?
Predictor: Benedikt, Michael L.
Prediction, in context:In a lecture at the “New Urbanism Symposium” at Princeton Oct. 17, 1992, that was also developed into a chapter for the book “The New Urbanism,” Michael Benedikt says: ”What might we say of the coming reality of cyberspace in its yet fuller, Gibsonian expression? What might we say … of a time when super-fast computers, singly and together, generate and sustain totally absorbing visual worlds, populated and teeming with avatars and scoundrels and gigantic, dizzying databases tilting like drunken electric pyramids…when, in the silicon banks of machines whirring in stuffy rooms there breathe whole alternative cities, the sites of a delirious new urbanism entire? … I would also refer the reader to his or her daily newspaper, generally in the Science and Business pages, where the infrastructure of cyberspace can be watched being put into place satellite by satellite, optical cable by optical cable, computer chip by computer chip, interface innovation by interface innovation, software company by software company, and alliance by alliance of global telecommunications, entertainment, and computer corporations. Cyberspace is on its way as surely as a freight train heard two valleys away.”
Date of prediction: October 17, 1992
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: The New Urbanism
Title, headline, chapter name: Cityspace, Cyberspace and The Spatiology of Information
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ar.utexas.edu/center/benedikt_articles/cityspace.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Boone, Jason Matthew