You are in your kitchen on a rainy Monday morning in the year 2005. You pour a cup of coffee and turn to the blank kitchen wall. “Give me the news,” you say, and the wall, actually a giant computer/television screen, changes into a gorgeous full-color map of the world. Headlines, pictures, or icons pinpoint the locations of news stories that your personal computer program has culled from a variety of sources around the world. You ask for each story in the order you prefer, or you receive an automatic sequence in television, voice, or text. You are saving time by getting only what you want, when you want it, while your hands make toast.
Predictor: Hume, Ellen
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 research paper titled “Tabloids, Radio and the Future of News,” Ellen Hume of the Annenberg Washington Program writes:”You are in your kitchen on a rainy Monday morning in the year 2005. You pour a cup of coffee and turn to the blank kitchen wall. ‘Give me the news,’ you say, and the wall, actually a giant computer/television screen, changes into a gorgeous full-color map of the world. Headlines, pictures, or icons pinpoint the locations of news stories that your personal computer program has culled from a variety of sources around the world. You ask for each story in the order you prefer, or you receive an automatic sequence in television, voice, or text. You are saving time by getting only what you want, when you want it, while your hands make toast … You stay with a developing issue as long as your interest, money, and time permit. Some of the information comes free as part of your monthly cable or online service, some is subsidized by imbedded advertising, and some requires an access or per-minute-of-usage charge. If you don√ït like advertising, you can pay more to get ad-free material. If you don√ït mind getting information that√ïs not so fresh, you can pay less. When you want something on paper, you say ‘print’ and your printer whirs into action … Next you call your message center – your ‘virtual community’ of friends and colleagues who have posted news for each other from around the world – and you check out a video e-mail postcard from your cousin in Hawaii. Finally, you say goodbye to the screen, which turns back into a kitchen wall. If you are still commuting to work (instead of telecommuting) and don√ït have time for any of this, you grab your portable computer or ‘personal digital assistant,’ a combination of cellular telephone, computer, television, radio, and fax machine that is no larger than a small paperback book. Plugged in all night to the multimedia center at your home, this tiny device has been receiving updated versions of customized news. On the way to work … You dash off a fax in longhand on the screen of your personal digital assistant and press a button. Your fax will emerge in clean typescript from each of your colleagues√ï printers around the world before everyone gathers for the 9 a.m. teleconference. Arriving back home after work, you plug the portable communicator back into your home media center and ask the system to archive Dave Barry√ïs column. You call up new messages, news, and special advertising information on the screen; make theater and plane reservations for next week; and order a pizza. You and your family watch a new custom newscast and catch a favorite movie or television program. Then you fall asleep watching the baseball game while your spouse chooses the camera angles and calls up instant replays. Is this science fiction? Does the world really want this kind of interactive, multimedia lifestyle? Can middle-class Americans afford it? Will people ever order customized news and pizza from their television sets? Certainly, such a high-tech future isn√ït for everyone. Some of these gadgets may cost too much, take too much time, or remain too daunting. Skeptics point out, for example, that the picture phone has been available for years, yet most consumers have not bought it. VCRs everywhere are still blinking ’12:00′ because folks haven√ït had time to figure out how to set their clocks, and World Wide Web searches may appeal only to a small, niche market.”
Biography:Ellen Hume wrote “Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News: Technology’s Impact on Journalism” as an Annenberg Senior Fellow at Northwestern University in 1995. She had previously served as executive director of the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Her work analyzed how media, politics and government interact. She was a White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, served as National Reporter for the Los Angeles Times and also worked at the Detroit Free Press. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Tabloids, Talk Radio and the Future of News
Title, headline, chapter name: The Future of News: The Consumer Wakes
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ellenhume.org/articles/tabloids2.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Little, Brandi W.