The asphalt highways – and the society around them – are a reflection of successful lobbying by powerful business interests and external compulsion, not simply the free choices of consumers. There is no guarantee that the process of wiring consumers and employees into the electronic highway system will be different.
Predictor: Sclove, Richard
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 essay for Outlook section of The Washington Post, Richard Sclove and Jeffrey Scheuer write: ”Disparities in access to new information systems have already begun to surface. A study released this past week by a group of public-interest organizations … notes that low-income and minority communities are underrepresented in U.S. telephone companies’ initial plans for installing advanced communications networks. Unequal access is only the most obvious among many social repercussions that may lie in store for us. The real history of the interstate highway system suggests how we can think about and control the vast implications of new technologies and a new national public infrastructure … The asphalt highways – and the society around them – are a reflection of successful lobbying by powerful business interests and external compulsion, not simply the free choices of consumers. There is no guarantee that the process of wiring consumers and employees into the electronic highway system will be different.”
Biography:Richard Sclove was founder and an advisory board member of The Loka Institute, a nonprofit organization in Amherst, Mass., dedicated to making research, science and technology responsive to social and environmental concerns. He is also the author of the book “Democracy and Technology” (1995). (Futurist/Consultant.)
Date of prediction: May 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Role of Govt./Industry
Name of publication: Washington Post
Title, headline, chapter name: The Ghost in the Modem: For Architects of the Info-Highway, Some Lessons From the Concrete Interstate
Quote Type: Partial quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.loka.org/alerts/loka.1.6.txt
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Taylor, Kellen L.