I have extracted three clues as to what the I-way will really be like … The first clue is: Follow the free. In the three decades that digital technology has been around, many of the most profitable businesses got going by exploiting services or products originally given away free … The second clue is: Let the copies breed. Whatever it is that we are constructing by connecting everything to everything, we know the big thing will copy effortlessly. The I-way is a gigantic copy machine. It is a law of the digital realm: anything digital will be copied, and anything copied once will fill the universe. Further, every effort to restrict copying is doomed to failure … The third clue is that it’s a new literary space, man.
Predictor: Kelly, Kevin
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article he wrote for newspaper The Guardian of London, Wired magazine editor Kevin Kelly says: ”I work at Wired, an American magazine about the social culture growing up around the prototyes of [the information superhighway, which he abbreviates to I-way]. I live on the Internet, and I hang out with Silicon Valley visionaries. At Wired, we track the big powers such as the cable and telephone conglomerates, and the wistful experiments of hackers and dedicated hobbyists. We are watching to see how the ‘street’ uses this emerging technology. Everyone wants to know what the I-way will be like. Everyone in book publishing, television making, newspaper selling, telephone providing and satellite broadcasting wants to know how this will affect their livelihood. Could some expert tell them what to back, what to expect? But there is an expert vacuum. The entire package is still in testing. So they call me, an editor of a magazine that proclaims: ‘The future of media and information technology is whatever we want to make it, and we are deciding right now.’ I have extracted three clues as to what the I-way will really be like from observing ways ordinary citizens use the scraps of digital technology now trickling in. The first clue is: Follow the free. In the three decades that digital technology has been around, many of the most profitable businesses got going by exploiting services or products originally given away free … The second clue is: Let the copies breed. Whatever it is that we are constructing by connecting everything to everything, we know the big thing will copy effortlessly. The I-way is a gigantic copy machine. It is a law of the digital realm: anything digital will be copied, and anything copied once will fill the universe. Further, every effort to restrict copying is doomed to failure … The third clue is that it’s a new literary space, man. Just as our thought shapes technology, technology shapes our thought. The technology of language and knowledge particularly shapes what we can think … modernity has centered on the fixed authority of the printed text.”
Biography:Kevin Kelly was the author of the book “Out of Control” and the first executive editor of the highly influential Wired magazine. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Guardian (London)
Title, headline, chapter name: In 2004 We’ll All Live on the Internet with Silicon Valley Visionaries. Kevin Kelly Already Does.
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=da999e988215a1ea15b156d0f8aa909c
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Komorowski, Anne Gabrielle