The industrial age blossomed through diverse innovations of tens of thousands of garage tinkerers. Here, at the emergence of the information age, the need exists, nationally, for a similar renaissance of widespread inventiveness, spurred by personal global communications systems, home PC’s and communicating notebook computers, and local networks, beginning with the most affordable. Federal funding for grassroots innovation is necessary to reach our national goal of an NII based on practical applications: “Value-pull, not Tech-push.”
Predictor: Odasz, Frank
Prediction, in context:The 1995 book “Public Access to the Internet,” edited by Brian Kahin and James Keller carries the chapter, “Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks” by Frank Odasz, the director of Big Sky Telegraph, Western Montana College of the University of Montana. He writes: ”Most information that can really make a positive impact on individuals is textual; even that must first be finely honed. The prevailing assumption of federal NII discussions and corporate announcements, however, appears to be that expensive bandwidth with a video emphasis is what citizens need. These different assumptions or visions imply different implementations of information infrastructure, one consistent with the community and individual vision, one not. Communities can avoid repeating the history of the cable example by implementing information infrastructure through grassroots efforts focused on achieving local economic and social benefits in a cost-efficient manner … Grassroots innovators have predominantly had to do for themselves what common sense dictates we should be doing as a nation. The industrial age blossomed through diverse innovations of tens of thousands of garage tinkerers. Here, at the emergence of the information age, the need exists, nationally, for a similar renaissance of widespread inventiveness, spurred by personal global communications systems, home PC’s and communicating notebook computers, and local networks, beginning with the most affordable. Federal funding for grassroots innovation is necessary to reach our national goal of an NII based on practical applications: ‘Value-pull, not Tech-push.’ … Grassroots innovations demonstrate more potential for a truly beneficial NII than the visions of the corporate giants. Federal funding of grassroots innovations is necessary to provide the diversity of applications needed for a successful NII.”
Biography:Frank Odasz was an assistant professor of computing education at the University of Colorado and the director of Big Sky Telegraph, a popular community network of the time. He was widely known as a speaker on community networking and educational technologies. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Public Access to the Internet (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 116, 117
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne