The price of everything falls so rapidly and the efficiencies of the architecture are so great that the technology needed to use the Internet becomes nearly free. Large commercial enterprises keep to their own cybermalls, leaving the rest of cyberspace unpaved. A free-floating cybercash economy develops which has no connection with the Earth-bound banking system. The Internet evolves as a self-organizing, smoothly functioning anarchy. This is an extreme that has elements of the plausible.
Predictor: Rutkowski, Anthony Michael
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for New Scientist, Joe Flower quotes Anthony Rutkowski, executive directory of the Internet Society. Flower writes: ”[According to Anthony Rutkowski:] ‘The greatest value of the Internet is its connectivity. Virtually everyone understands that.’ [One Internet development] scenario is what people are calling the ‘hacker’s dream.’ The price of everything falls so rapidly and the efficiencies of the architecture are so great that the technology needed to use the Internet becomes nearly free. Large commercial enterprises keep to their own cybermalls, leaving the rest of cyberspace unpaved. A free-floating cybercash economy develops which has no connection with the Earth-bound banking system. The Internet evolves as a self-organizing, smoothly functioning anarchy. Rutkowski calls this ‘an extreme that has elements of the plausible.’ … Another joker in the futures pack is unlimited bandwidth. There are no limitations, unlike the open land around a city. In cyberspace, you can always make more space, provided the technology continues on the course it has taken over the past two decades. The cybermall may be able to coexist with the dreams of hackers. As Rutkowski describes this scenario, ‘diversity – much like the real world, only much more accessible.'”
Biography:Anthony Michael (Tony) Rutkowski was a lawyer and engineer who was an executive director of the Internet Society during some key years of development in the 1990s. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: New Scientist
Title, headline, chapter name: Idiot’s Guide to the Net: From Boston’s Cyberbars to Siena’s Schoolrooms, Some of the Frequently Asked Questions About the Network that Connects Us All
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 2222
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney