I’m the goddamn wannabe Luddite who wonders what America will look like if every rich person has a sprawling compound in some gloriously beautiful – and ecologically fragile – state like Utah while cities are abandoned to the poor. And yet, I’m actually living the “electronic cottage” dream of the Gilders, Gingriches and Tofflers. I’m turning on, logging in and crashing out here in my own little nest. I’m a “prosumer” in the infoweb, absorbing great gobs of data and disgorging a little of my own every day … I’m human, a social animal. I’m not a god, I’m a hairless chimp with a messianic complex and a mouse. I need human contact and simple pleasures. I need to eat, poop and see people smile … But instead of returning to the basics, I, like many of us, am spending more and more of my time with my face bathed in monitorglow, getting my fix of digital junk. Won’t someone please unwire me before it’s too late?
Predictor: Scheer, Christopher
Prediction, in context:Christopher Scheer wrote the following in a 1995 essay for The Nation:”Take the future world of right-wing visionary George Gilder – please. Listening to Gilder, one might get the impression that the only thing keeping us from being happy is all these other people: If we could only live ‘virtually,’ we’d be safe from all the bad stuff out there and stimulated by all the good. His future is sort of an intellectual’s version of the survivalist dream: Leave the now-irrelevant cities, hole up in your crime-free Utah faux ranch with your wall-size interactive TV and call up the world of high culture in Sensurround sound (Gilder, incidentally, says lots of Silicon Valley people are moving to Utah because ‘of the moral disciplines that underlie that community and translate into work effort and entrepreneurship’) … I’m the goddamn wannabe Luddite who wonders what America will look like if every rich person has a sprawling compound in some gloriously beautiful – and ecologically fragile – state like Utah while cities are abandoned to the poor. And yet, I’m actually living the ‘electronic cottage’ dream of the Gilders, Gingriches and Tofflers. I’m turning on, logging in and crashing out here in my own little nest. I’m a ‘prosumer’ in the infoweb, absorbing great gobs of data and disgorging a little of my own every day … I’m human, a social animal. I’m not a god, I’m a hairless chimp with a messianic complex and a mouse. I need human contact and simple pleasures. I need to eat, poop and see people smile. I need some sun, some rain and the pleasures of someday holding the tiny paw of my own child. But instead of returning to the basics, I, like many of us, am spending more and more of my time with my face bathed in monitorglow, getting my fix of digital junk. Won’t someone please unwire me before it’s too late?”
Date of prediction: May 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Social Withdrawal/Addiction
Name of publication: The Nation
Title, headline, chapter name: The Pursuit of Techno-Happiness
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?Did=000000001832569&Fmt=3&Deli=1&Mtd=1&Idx=42&Sid=1&RQT=309
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney