How can use be rationed? Economists Jeffrey MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian at the University of Michigan propose a “congestion pricing” scheme. When your computer sent off a packet, it’d attach a note of how much you were prepared to pay for it to arrive promptly – say 0.002 U.S. cents for 200 bytes. Automatic real-time “auctions” at switching centers would determine the lowest “bid” at which packets would be passed; every packet which got through would pay that lowest price, and others would be delayed. When there was no congestion, all packets would travel free … “Netizens” really would become hitchhikers on the infobahn, squeezing into the gaps in the coming flood of commerce.
Predictor: MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for The Guardian, a London-based newspaper, technology commentator Mike Holderness quotes economists Jeffrey MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian. Holderness writes: ”Things can get even more complicated on the net. One reason it’s so cheap to operate is that it’s ‘connectionless’: when you log your computer on to a machine in Nevada, the end-to-end link is illusory. Information travels in ‘packets,’ which effectively find their own way to their destination, possibly by several different routes in the course of a minute. So record-keeping of heroic proportions would be required to issue bills. So how can use be rationed? Economists Jeffrey MacKie-Mason and Hal Varian at the University of Michigan propose a ‘congestion pricing’ scheme. When your computer sent off a packet, it’d attach a note of how much you were prepared to pay for it to arrive promptly – say 0.002 U.S. cents for 200 bytes. Automatic real-time ‘auctions’ at switching centers would determine the lowest ‘bid’ at which packets would be passed; every packet which got through would pay that lowest price, and others would be delayed. When there was no congestion, all packets would travel free. The neat thing about this is that it’s the commercial services which [media mogul Rupert] Murdoch and friends want to put on the Net – interactive TV and so on – which demand real-time communication. Mailing lists and text discussions can tolerate delays. In this sense, the ‘netizens’ really would become hitchhikers on the infobahn, squeezing into the gaps in the coming flood of commerce.”
Date of prediction: June 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Microtransactions
Name of publication: Guardian (London)
Title, headline, chapter name: High Anxiety for Hitchhikers on the Infobahn: Just as Millions Outside the Groves of Academe Discover the Joys of Essentially Free Global Communications on the Internet, it’s All Changing
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.poptel.org.uk/nuj/mike/articles/gdn-netb.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney