Who will build and control the “Information Superhighway” that will unleash these changes? Anyone who thinks that this revolution will be dominated by any one power, much less the Barry-Diller-John-Malone-Bell-Atlantic-Time Warner shovel-more-at-them-and-they’ll-eat-it school of marketing, is a fool. This is a bogeyman that has been created by the self-appointed advocates of the information “have-nots” in their efforts to create a new round of complex government dependencies and new industrial policies. The rush to protect us from the 500-channel cable monster is a ruse to justify one last desperate grasp for power. The growth of Cyberspace will not and cannot be planned by any central authorities, government or corporate. It will be a spontaneously self-organizing, continuously evolving, chaotic free-for-all shaped only by the uncoerced choices of the millions of individuals that populate it. And this will make it the perfect crucible for Radical Capitalism.
Predictor: Frezza, Bill
Prediction, in context:On the web site for DigitaLiberty, co-founder Bill Frezza, a telecommunications industry veteran, takes issue with the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s support of the 1993 Digital Telephony bill and presents his new organization’s view of how the world will change in a networked communications age. Frezza writes: ”Who will build and control the ‘Information Superhighway’ that will unleash these changes? Anyone who thinks that this revolution will be dominated by any one power, much less the Barry-Diller-John-Malone-Bell-Atlantic-Time Warner shovel-more-at-them-and-they’ll-eat-it school of marketing, is a fool. This is a bogeyman that has been created by the self-appointed advocates of the information “have-nots” in their efforts to create a new round of complex government dependencies and new industrial policies. The rush to protect us from the 500-channel cable monster is a ruse to justify one last desperate grasp for power. The growth of Cyberspace will not and cannot be planned by any central authorities, government or corporate. It will be a spontaneously self-organizing, continuously evolving, chaotic free-for-all shaped only by the uncoerced choices of the millions of individuals that populate it. And this will make it the perfect crucible for Radical Capitalism.”
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: DigitaLiberty
Title, headline, chapter name: The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.digitalib.org/
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney