The prediction, in brief:

It is too early to tell what the digital counterculture will call itself, but the history of the hippies offers a clue … the tekkies will arrive sometime in the mid-1990s, if not sooner. Watch the skies for a new comet – it will be digital, and its tail is likely to glow in Technicolor swirls. Its arrival will change our lives forever.

Predictor: Saffo, Paul

Prediction, in context:

In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Paul Saffo, a research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, writes:”It is too early to tell what the digital counterculture will call itself, but the history of the hippies offers a clue. ‘Hippie’ traces its origins to ‘hipster,’ slang for a cruel and cynical 1950s subculture that predated the beats. The digital counterculture thus is likely to appropriate an older term for its own, in the same way that the hippies appropriated and turned ‘hipster’ into something entirely new. I’ll bet that they call themselves something like ‘tekkies,’ consciously adopting the scornful ’80s slang for nerds, stripping the word of its industrial coldness and making it synonymous with the human control of technology. Hippies appeared in 1965, several years after the beatnik movement had gone public. Given this chronology, the tekkies will arrive sometime in the mid-1990s, if not sooner. Watch the skies for a new comet – it will be digital, and its tail is likely to glow in Technicolor swirls. Its arrival will change our lives forever.”

Biography:

Paul Saffo was the director of a decades-old research and forecasting foundation called the Institute for the Future, located in Menlo Park, Calif., in the 1990s. This Institute was a non-profit think tank that consulted for a large number of businesses and government entities, including telecommunications and consumer companies. (Futurist/Consultant.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1993

Topic of prediction: Community/Culture

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Cyberpunk R.I.P.

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/1.4_cyberpunk_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney