Q: What were Jerry Garcia’s last words before his heart attack? A: “Netscape opened at what?” … “This kind of phenomenon is like a great, big loopy comet that shows up only once in a while,” says futurist Paul Saffo. “The impact of Netscape is as much emotional as financial.”
Predictor: Saffo, Paul
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Newsweek magazine, reporters David Kaplan and Adam Rogers write about the revolution wrought by the arrival of the Mosaic browser and Netscape, the company founded by its orignator, Marc Andreessen. They include a quote from futurist Paul Saffo: ”By dominating the software market for navigating the Web, and by designing tools for building sites on the Web’s virtual real estate, Netscape hopes to become the Microsoft of the Internet … On Wall Street, Netscape has produced an unprecedented stock frenzy … On Aug. 9, 1995, the public got its first chance to buy stock in the company. Offering price: $28. Within minutes, it rocketed to $74 3/4 … Up the peninsula, San Franciscans were mourning the death of a Grateful Dead rock star. Yet around the happy valley that day the entrepreneurs were telling this joke. Q: What were Jerry Garcia’s last words before his heart attack? A: ‘Netscape opened at what?’ … the stock price hit $100 by Thanksgiving and headed for lunar orbit at $174 by early December – not bad for a company that has yet to show a dime of profit. ‘This kind of phenomenon is like a great, big loopy comet that shows up only once in a while,’ says futurist Paul Saffo. ‘The impact of Netscape is as much emotional as financial.'”
Biography:Paul Saffo was the director of a decades-old research and forecasting foundation called the Institute for the Future, located in Menlo Park, Calif., in the 1990s. This Institute was a non-profit think tank that consulted for a large number of businesses and government entities, including telecommunications and consumer companies. (Futurist/Consultant.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Language/Interface/Software
Name of publication: Newsweek
Title, headline, chapter name: Nothing but Net
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 32
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney