Electronic text processing marks the next major shift in information technology after the development of the printed book. It promises (or threatens) to produce effects on our culture, particularly our literature, education, criticism and scholarship, just as radical as those produced by Gutenberg’s movable type.
Predictor: Landow, George P.
Prediction, in context:In a 1992 article he wrote for The New York Times, “The End of Books,” Robert Coover quotes from George P. Landow’s book “Hypertext.” Coover writes:”As hyperspace-walker George P. Landow puts it in his recent book surveying the field, ‘Hypertext’: ‘Electronic text processing marks the next major shift in information technology after the development of the printed book. It promises (or threatens) to produce effects on our culture, particularly our literature, education, criticism and scholarship, just as radical as those produced by Gutenberg’s movable type. Noting that the ‘movement from the tactile to the digital is the primary fact about the contemporary world,’ Mr. Landow observes that, whereas most writings of print-bound critics working in an exhausted technology are ‘models of scholarly solemnity, records of disillusionment and brave sacrifice of humanistic positions,’ writers in and on hypertext ‘are downright celebratory … Most poststructuralists write from within the twilight of a wished-for coming day; most writers of hypertext write of many of the same things from within the dawn.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Publishing
Name of publication: New York Times
Title, headline, chapter name: The End of Books
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://cas.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/370/EndofBooks.htm
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney