Interactive telecommuting will be uncomfortable for many years to come, and for many applications it may not be viable in our lifetime … remote surgery from Tokyo to Zaire will probably be off-limits, as will virtual sports games between real users. The optimistic side is that relatively short-distance telecommuting is almost inevitable.
Predictor: Sah, Adam
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 article for Wired magazine, Adam Sah writes: ”There has been an enormous amount of speculation lately about the future of internetworking, with particular emphasis on how the data superhighway will change all of our lives, creating a vast virtual environment with unlimited potential … The dream is to disconnect your physical location from your ‘virtual’ location – to be able to work with colleagues in Minneapolis from that beach in Maui. Unfortunately, we are bumping up against the speed of light. While no one is contesting the seemingly unlimited bandwidth offered, the latency of these devices is still hindered by the medium. Latency is defined as the minimum time to perform the smallest operation … With the increasing speed of the computers themselves, software latency is bound to drop … The way we transmit data can also be improved. Currently, errors are corrected via retransmission. Next-generation protocols will be concerned with bandwidth and instead will send error-correcting and/or duplicate data in separate packets, minimizing the need for retransmission. Nonetheless, interactive telecommuting will be uncomfortable for many years to come, and for many applications it may not be viable in our lifetime … remote surgery from Tokyo to Zaire will probably be off-limits, as will virtual sports games between real users. The optimistic side is that relatively short-distance telecommuting is almost inevitable. Hundred-mile telecommutes involve latencies of less than 1/1000 of a second, opening the door for the entire gamut of virtual activities.”
Biography:Adam Sah was a high-tech journalist for Wired magazine and other publications in the 1990s. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: December 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: Telecommuting
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Limits of Worldwide Networking
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/1.6_worldwide_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Smoot, Barry