We are smashing arbitrary print-centric boundaries among author, editor, and audience. These categories did not exist before the invention of moveable type, and they will not survive this decade.
Predictor: Saffo, Paul
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Paul Saffo, a research fellow at the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, writes:”Littera scripta manet – the written word remains. Though it was recorded almost two millennia ago, Horace’s maxim echoes a surprising fact that lurks in today’s digital revolution. An ever-growing media palette has failed to dislodge the centrality of the written word from our lives … In fact, the written word doesn’t just remain; it is flourishing like kudzu vines at the boundaries of the digital revolution. The explosion of e-mail traffic on the Internet represents the largest boom in letter writing since the 18th century. Today’s cutting-edge infonauts are flooding cyberspace with gigabyte upon gigabyte of ASCII musings. But we hardly notice this textual explosion because, mercifully, it is in large part paperless. Vague clouds of electrons flitting to and fro over the Net have replaced pulverized trees lugged by postal carriers. This has spared our landfills, but it has also obscured a critical media shift. Words have been decoupled from paper. Like the stuff of Horace’s affection, text is still comprised of 26 letters, but freed from the entombing, distancing oppression of paper, it has become as novel as the hottest new media. In fact, our electronic novelties are transforming the word as profoundly as the printing press did half a millennium ago. For starters, we are smashing arbitrary print-centric boundaries among author, editor, and audience. These categories did not exist before the invention of moveable type, and they will not survive this decade. Just as monk scriveners at once wrote, edited, and read, information surfers browsing online services today routinely play all three roles: selectively scanning, absorbing, editing, and creating on-the-fly in real time. The printing press gave life and reach to the word, but at the terrible cost of making text formal and immutable. Printed words became as immobile as flies in amber, and readers knew that they could look, but not change.”
Biography:Paul Saffo was the director of a decades-old research and forecasting foundation called the Institute for the Future, located in Menlo Park, Calif., in the 1990s. This Institute was a non-profit think tank that consulted for a large number of businesses and government entities, including telecommunications and consumer companies. (Futurist/Consultant.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Hot New Medium: Text
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/1.2_saffo_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney