A cloud … is building, a hurricane of over-information that threatens, if it continues, to serve as nothing more than nonsense deforesting large tracts of our national acreage … To focus the amount of information we are producing on a weekly basis, which probably exceeds that produced in most of the preceding centuries, would take an enormous lens, or perhaps a million rather tiny ones.
Predictor: Rickard, Jack
Prediction, in context:Jack Rickard made the following statement in a panel presentation titled “Electronic Speech, Press & Assembly” at the 1991 Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility: ”Probably of a greater concern to me reguarding our rights as individuals in the future is our ability to access usable information out of a cloud that is building, a hurricane of over-information that threatens, if it continues, to serve as nothing more than nonsense deforesting large tracts of our national acreage. I am a little bit hopeful in this somewhat gloomy prospect of information that there may be a way to rationalize it. To focus the amount of information we are producing on a weekly basis, which probably exceeds that produced in most of the preceding centuries, would take an enormous lens, or perhaps a million rather tiny ones. In this I see the possibility of the bulletin-board system as a speciality-publishing medium where individuals can focus information on very narrow topics.”
Biography:Jack Rickard, the editor/publisher of Boardwatch Magazine, the magazine of the 1990s home-grown BBS industry, was also co-founder of the Online Networking Exposition and BBS Convention (ONE BBSCON). (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: March 28, 1991
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Information Overload
Name of publication: Proceedings of the First Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy
Title, headline, chapter name: Electronic Speech, Press & Assembly
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 159
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas