There is a whole new business in confiding our profiles to a third party, which will behave like a Swiss bank … What we should be looking for is an entity which is able and willing to keep our identities confidential while at the same time passing along newsworthy advertising and information. Such services will only work with a high degree of machine learning. While it is important to postulate such learning, how does this relate to human learning?
Predictor: Negroponte, Nicholas
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 essay for Wired magazine, Nicholas Negroponte of MIT’s Media Lab writes: ”There is a whole new business in confiding our profiles to a third party, which will behave like a Swiss bank. I fear this will not be one of my credit card companies, which have sold my name for all sorts of purposes, and have thus shot themselves in the foot. It must be a credible third party, perhaps a local telephone company, perhaps a long distance company like AT&T, perhaps a new venture altogether. What we should be looking for is an entity which is able and willing to keep our identities confidential while at the same time passing along newsworthy advertising and information. Such services will only work with a high degree of machine learning. While it is important to postulate such learning, how does this relate to human learning?”
Biography:Nicholas Negroponte, a co-founder of MIT’s Media Lab and a popular speaker and writer about technologies of the future, wrote one of the 1990s’ best-selling books about the new future of communications, “Being Digital.” (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Less Is More: Interface Agents as Digital Butlers
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.06/negroponte_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney