What happens if this little magazine-sized personal computer of mine holds a million documents? Once it is no longer a problem to see or read the documents, the problem becomes how do you find them? How do you organize them? That is when you need agents to act as facilitators, to go find things for you. You need ways for the system to alert you when information becomes available. I mean, half the stuff that’s on any server you’ve never seen before. You don’t even know what to look for because you don’t know it exists, so you need a serendipitous way of finding things, of having things present themselves to you.
Predictor: Warnock, John
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, David Henry Goodstein interviews John Warnock, the founder of Adobe Systems. Goodstein quotes Warnock:”Agents are essential for managing. What happens if this little magazine-sized personal computer of mine holds a million documents? Once it is no longer a problem to see or read the documents, the problem becomes how do you find them? How do you organize them? That is when you need agents to act as facilitators, to go find things for you. You need ways for the system to alert you when information becomes available. I mean, half the stuff that’s on any server you’ve never seen before. You don’t even know what to look for because you don’t know it exists, so you need a serendipitous way of finding things, of having things present themselves to you.”
Biography:John Warnock was the founder of Adobe, a major software maker of the 1990s. He introduced the concept of PDF in 1991. (Technology Developer/Administrator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Scriptwriter: John Warnock, the Inventor of PostScript and the Founder of Adobe Systems, Plots the Future of Media
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/postscript_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney