Never before has a group of citizens with such global awareness, depth of experience, media sophistication, and healthy skepticism been handed such a massive opportunity. Without any official proclamations, we’re already in the information age. We’re no longer at war, and we live in a networked economy. The left-wing is dead. The right-wing is dead. Ideology is dead. In place of the stale, 19th-century pre-cyber age ideologies that still provide coinage for “the system” (how could anyone still be proud to be identified as a socialist or a Jeffersonian or a libertarian?), proto-movements are beginning to form to tackle the far more radical politics of cyberspace.
Predictor: Stahlman, Mark
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Mark Stahlman, president of the New York-based research and financial services firm New Media Associates, writes: ”In speech after speech, [Vice President Al] Gore and Commerce Secretary Ron ‘no-ethics-violations-here’ Brown hammer away at the coming tragedy of the information have-nots. ‘We’ll never make it to the 21st century unless we bring all the citizens of this great land with us,’ say the pious digicrats. Do they ever spell out what an information have-not looks like? Or which new networked services are vital to democracy? Or why intervention is needed to make sure we make it safely to the millennium? They’re still studying the matter … Never before has a group of citizens with such global awareness, depth of experience, media sophistication, and healthy skepticism been handed such a massive opportunity. Without any official proclamations, we’re already in the information age. We’re no longer at war, and we live in a networked economy. The left-wing is dead. The right-wing is dead. Ideology is dead. In place of the stale, 19th-century pre-cyber age ideologies that still provide coinage for ‘the system’ (how could anyone still be proud to be identified as a socialist or a Jeffersonian or a libertarian?), proto-movements are beginning to form to tackle the far more radical politics of cyberspace … Take the example of drafting a ‘Statement of Principle on Cyberspace and the American Dream.’ By asking ‘Is cyberspace the next frontier of American entrepreneurship…or just a sandbox for second-wave bureaucrats?’ George Gilder, Esther Dyson, Alvin Toffler, and dozens of others are trying to craft a platform for the politics of post-industrial society. Barbra Streisand wasn’t invited to comment.”
Biography:Mark Stahlman was the president of the New York-based research and financial services firm New Media Associates in the 1990s. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Democracy
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Just Say No – To Cybercrats and Digital Control Freaks
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/stahlman.if_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney