Digital technology is ushering in a marriage between television, computers and telephones that many believe will revolutionize the business, political and cultural landscape of the entire globe.
Predictor: Harris, Blake
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article in Government Technology, Blake Harris writes: ”The Information Age is changing so many aspects of our lives that many people increasingly feel, as Newsweek noted earlier this year, that the information revolution is ‘spinning out of control.’ We aren’t too sure exactly where it is all going. And more to the point, we still really haven’t worked out where we want it to take us. This is especially true when it comes to cyberspace … Digital technology is ushering in a marriage between television, computers and telephones that many believe will revolutionize the business, political and cultural landscape of the entire globe – what Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates has described as a ‘new digital world order.’ The technological development needed to make this a reality largely has to do with the infrastructure that remains out of sight to most network users. The MBone (multicast backbone) has started to be overlaid on the existing Internet network to greatly expand the bandwidth and allow real videoconferencing. However, the T1 lines that typically connect current MBone sites can effectively carry only two or three videoconferences at a time. Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has shifted the bulk of its funding from the now-commercialized Internet to a new experimental network called the vBNS (Very-High-Speed Backbone Network Service) that will be operated separate from the Internet by MCI. This will link five supercomputer centers across the country to test high-speed router and switching technologies and will eventually lead to applications currently not considered possible because of bandwidth limitations.”
Date of prediction: October 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Government Technology
Title, headline, chapter name: Cyberspace 2020: The Future of Cyberspace Will Rely Not on Our Ability to Police it, but on What We Collectively Build There
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.govtech.net/magazine/gt/1995/oct/cyberspa.phtml
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Larry