Digital, connected, decentralized, ubiquitous: a network of networks, controlled by no one, buzzing with competition among innovative individuals and firms of all sizes, but with plenty of room for those who simply want to talk [ – this is how both Al Gore and Newt Gingrich see the future of the Internet].
Predictor: Rotenberg, Marc
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, John Heilemann looks at the relationship and rivalry of Republican Newt Gingrich and Democrat Al Gore, the two leading American politicians, and their role in determining the future of the National Information Infrastructure. Heilemann quotes Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Heilemann writes: ”Gore was widely seen as Mr. Information Superhighway … Then everything changed. Propelled into the House speakership by the Republican rout of 1994, Gingrich began using his new platform to offer his own grand (not to mention grandiose) views on the empowering effects of communications technology – views he had in fact been formulating for many years with the help of people like futurist Alvin Toffler. And so it was that 1995 saw Newt Gingrich and Al Gore in a pitched competition to be America’s most digital politician. In a way, the contest is just the flashiest side of Washington’s new space race: the sprint for cyberspace … ‘These two guys are fighting to capture the public’s imagination, and the stakes are enormous,’ says Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and a prominent public interest lobbyist based in Washington, D..C. ‘On competition, access, privacy, and rights, they’re fighting over the future of America’s communications and information infrastructure.’ The fight is not so much about what that future will look like as it is about how to get there – a fact that Gingrich and his allies try constantly to obscure. ‘Gore talks about highways, a pure industrial-age model,’ intones the Speaker. ‘I talk about cyberspace.’ But although the two use different language to describe what they see inside their crystal balls, the view itself is much the same. Digital, connected, decentralized, ubiquitous: a network of networks, controlled by no one, buzzing with competition among innovative individuals and firms of all sizes, but with plenty of room for those who simply want to talk. It is a future for which, both men will tell you, America’s ancient rgime of communications regulation is profoundly unsuited.”
Biography:Marc Rotenberg, was founder and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), in the 1990s. He won an EFF Pioneer Award in 1997 for his work as a “champion of privacy, human rights and civil liberties on the electronic frontier.” He targeted the impact of computer and telecommunications technologies on freedom and privacy and was an active writer and speaker on associated topics. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: The Making of The President 2000: America’s Futurist Politicians, Al Gore and Newt Gingrich, are Engaged in an Epic Struggle: the Last Time a Battle of This Magnitude Occurred, the New Deal Laid the Foundation of the Modern, Industrial, Bureaucratic State
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.12/gorenewt_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney