The right thing to do was go back into the private sector and take all I’d learned about information infrastructure and turn it into something people could use … When you’re in a fully networked environment, there isn’t much in the way of “there.”
Predictor: Cerf, Vinton G.
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article in The New York Times, writer Katie Hafner interviewed Vinton G. Cerf. Hafner writes: ”Vinton G. Cerf, a computer scientist as comfortable in an academic setting as he is in private industry, seems to make a success of nearly everything he touches. And when he returned to MCI in January after an eight-year absence, he was, by his own account, eager to build something again … known throughout the industry as the primary force behind the development of the Internet [he] is helping the MCI Communications Corporation in an ambitious six-year, $20 billion project called networkMCI … Prying [Cerf] loose from the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a nonprofit organization that he helped start with Robert Kahn in 1986, wasn’t easy. ‘After a lot of soul-searching,’ said Dr. Cerf, who is 51, ‘I concluded the right thing to do was go back into the private sector and take all I’d learned about information infrastructure and turn it into something people could use.’ … MCI is pouring millions into advertising networkMCI … its [12-year-old spokeswoman] is seen on a rocky shore and in snowy woods, dressed in a flowing black cape, offering verbal puzzlers like this: ‘There will be a road that will not connect two points, it will connect all points.’ And this: ‘There will be no more there. We will all only be here.’ The television spots … ‘make a lot of sense,’ said Dr. Cerf. ‘When you’re in a fully networked environment, there isn’t much in the way of “there.”‘”
Date of prediction: September 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: Profile: For ‘Father of the Internet,’ New Goals, Same Energy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=4a0ca42885292a837bb0acf39dcf29e9&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVtb-lSlAl&_md5=24c2ee4eeb628d31f3acb5e99fbd507d
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Catalfumo, Cara J.