I feel pretty cranky … kick-the-neighbor’s-cat cranky … I’m weary of the pretension and condescension of those who believe nirvana is here, frying quietly in the circuits of some magic box. I’m sick of the cyber hype … It’s more Edgar Cayce than Carl Jung out there, Boopsie. It will not last in this form, no matter how many obsessives are out there. Already I know reasonable folks who’ve decided that cruising the Net is about as vapid an exercise as cruising the mall, looking at stuff they don’t necessarily want to buy. Granted the Net’s much bigger, there’s lots more stuff that one doesn’t want to buy (or buy into) but the fascination eventually wears off … Besides, the telecommunications companies have caught on and sooner or later they’re going to impose some capitalist rationality on the whole system. It’s going to cost more – a lot more.
Predictor: Mart, Philip
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, journalist Philip Mart says the Internet will become a great tool but will not change the human experience. He writes: ”I feel pretty cranky. Not curmudgeonly, not gruff but lovable, just jazzed-up, kick-the-neighbor’s-cat cranky. And what’s put me in a bad mood is that I’ve been flipping through Compuserve magazine and WIRED again, and I’m weary of the pretension and condescension of those who believe nirvana is here, frying quietly in the circuits of some magic box. I’m sick of the cyber hype. I’m no neo-Luddite. I have my e-mail address, I actually use my computer to do cool things. I even want a bigger Macintosh, a faster Macintosh, a scanner and CD-ROM drive. I could use all that – I’m an information consumer and content provider … Yet to hear the cyber junkies talk, you’d think that a shining cyber city on the Net had appeared on the horizon, that an electronic version of the collective consciousness had been established, that blue-suited captains of the Earth had been brought to parity with the scruffy anarchist free-love advocate in some blessed virtual community. The cyber prophets have a Disneyesque faith in the electric adventure of the future – they believe in a kind of cyber utopia; where information, where data, flows free. And where they’ll finally be able to publish their heretofore unpublishable novels and screeds. They’ll finally be able to upload their smut and their solipsistic yearning; to float their bottled messages on a sea of swelling data, to be discovered by the unsuspecting and the bored. Every time I venture out on the Internet, it’s more like the CB radio craze of the 1970s than anything cogent or interesting. It’s all whining New Agers and anti-government types posting various theories of postmodern disintegration or boasting about how many guns they have. The level of conversation – if you can even call it conversation – on the Net consists largely of spasms of abuse (‘flames’) and the kind of peremptory opinion that readers of this newspaper’s Voices page will no doubt find familiar. It’s more Edgar Cayce than Carl Jung out there, Boopsie. It will not last in this form, no matter how many obsessives are out there. Already I know reasonable folks who’ve decided that cruising the Net is about as vapid an exercise as cruising the mall, looking at stuff they don’t necessarily want to buy. Granted the Net’s much bigger, there’s lots more stuff that one doesn’t want to buy (or buy into) but the fascination eventually wears off. I even know people who’ve given up their Internet access – they didn’t find what they wanted, they got bored. Besides, the telecommunications companies have caught on and sooner or later they’re going to impose some capitalist rationality on the whole system. It’s going to cost more – a lot more.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Title, headline, chapter name: Cyber Utopia a Mirage
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 19
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne