The prediction, in brief:

In the near future – maybe even by the time you read this – you can expect this level of music compression to become an everyday reality. You may also gain the power to take a piece of music and squish it yourself to one-tenth its size, without any audible loss of quality. In that case, you’ll be able to fit a CD onto an 88-Mbyte SyQuest cartridge and make as many undegraded bit-for-bit copies as you want. Or, you’ll be able to swap high-quality digital files over the Net without tying up your modem for hours at a time. And maybe one day, you’ll sit at home and browse through the biggest jukebox in the universe … We will have entered a new era in which music flows into our homes like water.

Predictor: Thompson, Ken

Prediction, in context:

For a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Charles Platt interviews Unix inventor Ken Thompson about his ideas for audio compression and an online music-distribution system. Platt lays out Thompson’s ideas, and concludes:”In the near future – maybe even by the time you read this – you can expect this level of music compression to become an everyday reality. You may also gain the power to take a piece of music and squish it yourself to one-tenth its size, without any audible loss of quality. In that case, you’ll be able to fit a CD onto an 88-Mbyte SyQuest cartridge and make as many undegraded bit-for-bit copies as you want. Or, you’ll be able to swap high-quality digital files over the Net without tying up your modem for hours at a time. And maybe one day, you’ll sit at home and browse through the biggest jukebox in the universe. When that day dawns, once again Thompson will have gotten what he wanted – and we will have entered a new era in which music flows into our homes like water.”

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information

Subtopic: Music

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Music on Demand: Bell Labs’s Ken Thompson, the Father of Unix, Has Invented a New Technology that Could Mean Never Having to Buy a CD Again

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.08/thompson_pr.html

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney