All publications will eventually go fully electronic … and newspapers will be the last. Paper is flexible, flat, reflective, and cheap. Computer displays as good as paper will be a long time coming – flexible is especially hard. There is some work on making erasable electronically writable paper, but don’t hold your breath. It is likely that newspapers will become electronic only as interactivity (personalization) can be introduced.
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 column for InfoWorld, publisher Bob Metcalfe interviews Nicholas Negroponte, a founder of MIT’s Media Lab. Metcalfe paraphrases Negroponte’s point of view on the future of newspapers:”Negroponte has become the most-interviewed media technologist on Earth – a professor with a PR department. My challenge was to get from him something about personalized electronic newspapers that he has not already said. Of course all publications will eventually go fully electronic, he said, but (as if to reassure me) not soon, and newspapers will be the last. Paper is flexible, flat, reflective, and cheap. Computer displays as good as paper will be a long time coming – flexible is especially hard. There is some work on making erasable electronically writable paper, but don’t hold your breath. It is likely that newspapers will become electronic only as interactivity (personalization) can be introduced.”
Biography:Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and a popular speaker and writer about technologies of the future, wrote one of the 1990s’ best-selling books about the new future of communications, “Being Digital.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Newspapers
Name of publication: InfoWorld
Title, headline, chapter name: Get Ready for Personalized Newspapers
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web5.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/976/268/36560492w5/purl=rc1_EAIM_0_A13709919&dyn=5!xrn_1_0_A13709919?sw_aep=ncliveec
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Garrison, Betty