Given the decreasing cost of hard-disk storage, it is likely that mathematicians a decade from now could house the entire body of mathematical literature in their desktop computers.
Predictor: Odlyzko, Andrew
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Jacques Leslie writes about the movement of bringing scholarly journals to the Internet. He quotes Andrew Odlyzko, an AT&T mathematician. Leslie writes:”Even if print journals were less expensive, the sheer volume of scholarly output has surpassed the shelf capacities of libraries. Andrew Odlyzko, an AT&T Bell Laboratories mathematician, has estimated that in his field half of all the papers ever published appeared in print in the last decade, and that another doubling is likely to occur within 20 years. While this growth rate threatens to exceed the capacity of even the most expansive library, Odlyzko argues that given the decreasing cost of hard-disk storage, it is likely that mathematicians a decade from now could house the entire body of mathematical literature in their desktop computers.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Goodbye, Gutenberg: Pixilating Peer Review is Revolutionizing Scholarly Journals
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/ejournals_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney