[Thomas Paine] have lots to say about the so-called information highway and the government’s alleged role in shaping it. One of his pamphlets – this may be the only thing he’d have in common with Newt Gingrich – would surely propose means of getting more computers and modems into the hands of people who can’t afford them. Instead of dying alone and in agony, Paine would spend his last days sending poignant e-mail all over the world from his deathbed via his PowerBook, arranging for his digital wake. He’d call for more humane treatment for the dying.
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: ”It’s easy to imagine Paine as a citizen of the new culture, issuing his fervent harangues from http://www.commonsense.com. He would be a cyber hell raiser, a net.fiend … He would check into Time Online’s message boards and tear into Republicans and Democrats daily … He would bombard Congress and the White House Internet site with proposals, reforms, and legislative initiatives, tackling the most explosive subjects head-on, enraging – at one time or another – everybody. The Net would help enormously in his various campaigns, allowing him to call up research papers, download his latest tract, fire off hundreds of angry posts, and receive hundreds of replies. They would hear from him soon enough in China and Iran, Croatia and Rwanda … He would emit nuclear flames from time to time, their recipients emerging singed and sooty. He would not use smileys. He would be flamed incessantly in turn. He would be spared the excruciating loneliness he faced in later life on that modest farm, where neighbors shunned him, where visitors rarely came, and where he pored over newspapers for any news of his former friends’ lives. No longer an outcast, thanks to the Net, he would find at least as many kindred spirits as adversaries; his cyber mailbox would be eternally full … Online, feuds rage and people storm at one another, but the vast digital news and information world contains many distinct communities. On bulletin boards and conferencing systems, there is already a moving and richly documented tradition of rushing to one another’s assistance, of viewing oneself as part of a collective culture … He’d have lots to say about the so-called information highway and the government’s alleged role in shaping it. One of his pamphlets – this may be the only thing he’d have in common with Newt Gingrich – would surely propose means of getting more computers and modems into the hands of people who can’t afford them. Instead of dying alone and in agony, Paine would spend his last days sending poignant e-mail all over the world from his deathbed via his PowerBook, arranging for his digital wake. He’d call for more humane treatment for the dying. He’d journal online about the shortcomings of medicine and the mystical experience of aging, while digging into his inexhaustible supply of prescriptions for the incalculable injustices that still afflict the world.”
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