Every morning millions of commuters across America sit in cars inching their way toward cluttered, polluted and crime-ridden cities. Or they sit in dilapidated trains rattling toward office towers that survive as business centers chiefly because of their superior access to the global network of computers and telecommunications. With telecomputers in every home attached to global fiber network, why would anyone commute?
Predictor: Karraker, Roger
Prediction, in context:In a 1991 article for The Whole Earth Review, a quarterly magazine of access to tools and ideas, Roger Karraker discusses the Internet, quoting George Gilder. Karraker writes: ”High-speed data communications to the home might also revolutionize where and how we live. Data communications could allow rural telecommuting, ending two centuries of ‘brain drain’ from the countryside to the cities. Gilder says, ‘Every morning millions of commuters across America sit in cars inching their way toward cluttered, polluted and crime-ridden cities. Or they sit in dilapidated trains rattling toward office towers that survive as business centers chiefly because of their superior access to the global network of computers and telecommunications. With telecomputers in every home attached to global fiber network, why would anyone commute? People would be able to see the boss life-size in high-definition video and meet with him as easily at home as at the office. They would be able to reach with equal immediacy the head of the foreign subsidiary or the marketing chief across the country. They would be able to send and receive documents almost instantly from anywhere.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Telecommuting
Name of publication: Whole Earth Revue
Title, headline, chapter name: Highways of the Mind or Toll Roads Between Information Castles?
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Criticisms/hiways_of_mind.article
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Stotler, Lary