There certainly is a political problem in the dissemination of the Internet … I advocate an awareness of the importance of the Internet and call for a mobilization to ensure its accessibility to all, to configure the technology, within its inherent materiality, into a vehicle of open cultural creation.
Predictor: Poster, Mark
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 e-mail interview with Erick Heroux, Mark Poster, a member of the humanities faculty at the University of California at Irvine and author of “The Second Media Age,” discusses the availability of Internet access: ”There certainly is a political problem in the dissemination of the Internet … I advocate an awareness of the importance of the Internet and call for a mobilization to ensure its accessibility to all, to configure the technology, within its inherent materiality, into a vehicle of open cultural creation. I’m not surprised that there are some (your Extropians) who may celebrate the Internet from a libertarian perspective. Political life is polymorphous and polysemous. Neo-Nazis and Trotskyite alike have bulletin boards. Nothing is pure about the Internet. The question is who shall transform its possibilities into determinate cultural configurations, and this remains an open issue.”
Biography:Mark Poster wrote the paper “Cyberdemocracy: Internet and the Public Sphere” in 1995 while teaching at the University of California, Irvine. He also wrote about technology for Wired magazine. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Digital Divide
Name of publication: University of Oregon Web site
Title, headline, chapter name: Interview With Mark Poster: Community, New Media; Post-humanism
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.uoregon.edu/~ucurrent/2-Poster.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Schmidt, Nicholas