Digital media could make it possible for people to interact – maybe even changing each other’s minds in the process – something traditional media inhibit throught their addicition to objectivity, spokespeople, and sensationalism … Online news suggests a forum in which it would be easier for fragmented political or racial groups to begin … teaching members of [many] tribes how to communicate and providing them with the simple means of doing so … If one tenet of our age is that information wants to be free, its companion is that media want to tell the truth. Neither information nor media get what they want much of the time; this is one of the great ironies of the information revolution and the sad legacy of the O.J. Simpson trial.
Predictor: Katz, Jon
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Jon Katz looks at how the O.J. Simpson trial revealed that public institutions and the media are guilty of making it hard to resolve important issues that our society faces. He writes: ”Digital media could make it possible for people to interact – maybe even changing each other’s minds in the process – something traditional media inhibit throught their addicition to objectivity, spokespeople, and sensationalism. Every online user knows that this kind of communication often breaks down barriers, forcing sender and receiver to deal with each other as individuals rather than as group members. There is already a precedent for opposing political forces to communicate directly via this technology. During the debate over gays in the military, gay soldiers spoke directly to wary veterans on CompuServe. There are more than a dozen newsgroups for African-American professionals on the Net, several for police officers who have shot people or been shot, one for black cops struggling to reconcile racial history with police work. Online news suggests a forum in which it would be easier for fragmented political or racial groups to begin what will be a tortuous process: teaching members of all those tribes how to communicate and providing them with the simple means of doing so. Unfortunately, as the biggest story of our times unfolds across millions of screens, the new media have not yet risen to the task of either proclaiming the awful truth or fostering the dialog we so desperately need to deal with it … If one tenet of our age is that information wants to be free, its companion is that media want to tell the truth. Neither information nor media get what they want much of the time; this is one of the great ironies of the information revolution and the sad legacy of the O.J. Simpson trial.”
Biography:Jon Katz was a 1990s technology columnist/journalist who wrote for Wired, Slashdot, HotWired and Rolling Stone. Part of his career was spent as a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe and Washington Post and as a producer for the CBS Morning News. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Guilty
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/oj_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Kohlhagen, Kelly C.