On the personal end of the coming news continuum, most individuals will possess some kind of “news assistant” or “agent,” a computer-generated servant dedicated to the task of scouring the reaches of cyberspace for information of interest … To answer the newsgathering patterns of these assistants, we might see the creation or evolution of multimedia databases/wire services, charging the owner of an agent for the amount of stories (or even bits) downloaded … In the same way that USA Today and other national papers specialize various editions for certain sections of the country, these media enterprises would allow a customer (or a customer’s agent) to create a personal newspaper from a wealth of stories.
Predictor: Ritzenhaler, Gary
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication magazine, Gary Ritzenhaler, assistant editor of the Florida Compass, a student-run “WWW news prototype,” writes:”On the personal end of the coming news continuum, most individuals will possess some kind of ‘news assistant’ or ‘agent,’ a computer-generated servant dedicated to the task of scouring the reaches of cyberspace for information of interest. These information seekers will be blind to nuances of style that makes one newspaper different from another; they will focus only on the relevance of the information to the user. The owner of a news assistant might customize it to prefer one news source over another, but it will not be unusual to receive several treatments of a breaking news item if the topic of those stories is important and relevant enough. To answer the newsgathering patterns of these assistants, we might see the creation or evolution of multimedia databases/wire services, charging the owner of an agent for the amount of stories (or even bits) downloaded. (One example might be an expanded version of the current Clarinet newsgroups; another might be evolutions of present database services like DIALOG or Lexis/Nexis.) In the same way that USA Today and other national papers specialize various editions for certain sections of the country, these media enterprises would allow a customer (or a customer’s agent) to create a personal newspaper from a wealth of stories.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Newspapers
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication
Title, headline, chapter name: Pyxis Cyberea
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jun/pyxis.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Butler, Lawrence