The prediction, in brief:

I read about a software developer who has six continuous teleconferencing sessions running all day, every day, in windows scattered around the margins of his terminal … Eventually bandwidth will get cheap enough to allow almost all Net users to do something like this, and if they do, my experience suggests it will be longtime, local friends who will end up on their displays.

Predictor: Hapgood, Fred

Prediction, in context:

In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Fred Hapgood, a science and technology writer based in Boston, writes:”Recently, I read about a software developer who has six continuous teleconferencing sessions running all day, every day, in windows scattered around the margins of his terminal. The people in these sessions aren’t even project colleagues – just friends he likes to banter with while he works. Eventually bandwidth will get cheap enough to allow almost all Net users to do something like this, and if they do, my experience suggests it will be longtime, local friends who will end up on their displays.”

Biography:

Fred Hapgood took on the role of moderator of the Nanosystems Interest Group at MIT and wrote a number of articles for Wired and other tech publications of the early 1990s. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Communication

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Wired

Title, headline, chapter name: Persistence of Locality

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/hapgood.if_pr.html

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