Here’s the bottom line: if you want the future of digital community-building to look like the Internet, you want the future of telecommunications regulation to be organized on common-carrier principles. Do yourself a big favor this month: say the phrase “common carrier” over and over until you start to like the sound of it. Then get yourself going: agitate, educate, and organize. Without you it just won’t happen.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:The February 1994 issue of The Network Observer, an online newsletter, carries lead-in titled “Issues and Openness” by Phil Agre, TNO editor, who was, at the time, working in the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Agre writes:”Here’s the bottom line: if you want the future of digital community-building to look like the Internet, you want the future of telecommunications regulation to be organized on common-carrier principles. Do yourself a big favor this month: say the phrase Ôcommon carrierÕ over and over until you start to like the sound of it. Then get yourself going: agitate, educate, and organize. Without you it just won’t happen.”
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: Issues and Openness
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/february-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne