Hope springs eternal, even in cyberspace. Jammers are heartened by the electronic frontier’s promise of a new media paradigm – interactive rather than passive, nomadic and atomized rather than resident and centralized, egalitarian rather than elitist.
Predictor: Dery, Mark
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article carried by the Essential Media network site, Mark Dery, an American media commentator, writes: ”Will fiber-optic superhighways make stored knowledge universally available, in the tradition of the public library, or will they merely facilitate psychological carpet bombing designed to soften up consumer defenses? And what of the network news? Will it be superseded by local broadcasts, with their heartwarming (always ‘heartwarming’) tales of rescued puppies and shocking (always ‘shocking’) stories of senseless mayhem, mortared together with airhead banter? Or will the Big Three give way to innumerable news channels, each a conduit for information about global, national and local events germane to a specific demographic? Will cyberpunk telejournalists equipped with Hi-8 video cameras, digital scanners, and PC-based editing facilities hack their way into legitimate broadcasts? Or will they, in a medium of almost infinite bandwidth and channels beyond count, simply be given their own airtime? In short, will the electronic frontier be wormholed with ‘temporary autonomous zones’ – Hakim Bey’s term for pirate utopias, centrifuges in which social gravity is artificially suspended – or will it be subdivided and overdeveloped by what cultural critic Andrew Ross calls ‘the military-industrial-media complex?’ … Hope springs eternal, even in cyberspace. Jammers are heartened by the electronic frontier’s promise of a new media paradigm – interactive rather than passive, nomadic and atomized rather than resident and centralized, egalitarian rather than elitist.”
Biography:Mark Dery was the author of “Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture” (Duke University Press, 1995). His writings on fringe culture, technology, mass media, and the arts appeared in the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Wired, 21.C, Mondo 2000, Elle, Interview, New York and The Village Voice. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Essential Media Features
Title, headline, chapter name: Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.essentialmedia.com/Shop/Dery.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney