Today’s media are what the Net should never become – but will surely evolve into if it fails to develop, articulate, fight fiercely for, and maintain a value system other than expanded memory, whiz-bang toys, and money. The digital age is young, ascending, diverse, already nearly as arrogant, and, in parts, as greedy as the mass media it is supplanting. The new generation faces enormous danger from government, from corporations that control the traditional media, from commercialization, and from its own chaotic growth. Thomas Paine is a guide, the conscience that can prompt new media to remember the past chiefly in order not to repeat it.
Predictor: Katz, Jon
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Jon Katz ties the vocal media master of Revolutionary War times, Thomas Paine, to the need for activism and similar voices in the age of digital communications. Katz writes: ”The Net offers what Paine and his revolutionary colleagues hoped for – a vast, diverse, passionate, global means of transmitting ideas and opening minds. That was part of the political transformation he envisioned when he wrote, ‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Through media, he believed, ‘we see with other eyes; we hear with other ears; and think with other thoughts, than those we formerly used.’ … Information wants to be free. That was the familiar and inspiring moral imperative behind the medium imagined by Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Media existed to spread ideas, to allow fearless argument, to challenge and question authority, to set a common social agenda. Asked about the reasons for new media, Paine would have answered in a flash: to advance human rights, spread democracy, ease suffering, pester government … The idea that ordinary citizens with no special resources, expertise, or political power – like Paine himself – could sound off, reach wide audiences, even spark revolutions, was brand-new to the world. In Paine’s wake, writes Gordon Wood in ‘The Radicalism of the American Revolution,’ ‘every conceivable form of printed matter – books, pamphlets, handbills, posters, broadsides, and especially newspapers – multiplied and were now written and read by many more ordinary people than ever before in history.’ … The people running the traditional media are in a state of near panic … at the fragmentation of an audience they once monopolized. In their search for answers, they seem to be looking at everything save what’s most important: values. Although journalism presumes great and lofty purpose, it has grown preoccupied with ratings, market penetration, stockholders, cultural demographics, and bottom lines … today’s media are what the Net should never become – but will surely evolve into if it fails to develop, articulate, fight fiercely for, and maintain a value system other than expanded memory, whiz-bang toys, and money. The digital age is young, ascending, diverse, already nearly as arrogant, and, in parts, as greedy as the mass media it is supplanting. The new generation faces enormous danger from government, from corporations that control the traditional media, from commercialization, and from its own chaotic growth. Thomas Paine is a guide, the conscience that can prompt new media to remember the past chiefly in order not to repeat it.”
Biography:Jon Katz was a 1990s technology columnist/journalist who wrote for Wired, Slashdot, HotWired and Rolling Stone. Part of his career was spent as a reporter and editor for the Boston Globe and Washington Post and as a producer for the CBS Morning News. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Journalism/Media
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Age of Paine: Thomas Paine Was One of the First Journalists to Use Media as a Weapon Against the Entrenched Power Structure. He Should be Resurrected as the Moral Father of the Internet. Jon Katz Explains Why
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.05/paine_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney