In the future, the Internet will certainly feature many small, homegrown, regional commercial systems … Internet voyagers will drop in to visit the unique communities they find outside their home systems, sampling the local cultural flavors and meeting and conversing with the individuals who inhabit those systems. The main attractions of these local Internet “towns” will prove to be their characteristic online conversations and social conventions and their focus on specialized fields of knowledge or problem solving.
Predictor: Figallo, Cliff
Prediction, in context:In a 1993 online essay, Cliff Figallo of The WELL includes remarks he adapted from a paper presented to the ‘Public Access to the Internet’ meeting at Harvard University in May, 1993. Figallo writes: ”In the future, the Internet will certainly feature many small, homegrown, regional commercial systems like The Well [the San Francisco-area’s Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link]. Such systems will pay for their own operations and for their Internet connections through user fees, handling all of the billing and administrative tasks relating to their users, developing their own local community standards of behavior and interaction. Their users will often leave the ‘home’ system, going out through Internet gateways to other regional systems or searching for information in the myriad databases of the Net. Internet voyagers will drop in to visit the unique communities they find outside their home systems, sampling the local cultural flavors and meeting and conversing with the individuals who inhabit those systems. The main attractions of these local Internet ‘towns’ will prove to be their characteristic online conversations and social conventions and their focus on specialized fields of knowledge or problem solving. The Well is a seminal example of what these small pioneering towns on the Internet highway system will be like.”
Biography:Cliff Figallo, was managing director of the WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link, one of the best known conferencing systems and virtual communities in the United States in the 1990s) and a director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Cambridge office in the early 1990s. He later worked with Pandora Systems. Figallo and John Coate are regarded to be the chief architects of the WELL’s implementation of virtual community. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: September 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Virtual Communities
Name of publication: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Title, headline, chapter name: The WELL: Small Town on the Internet Highway System
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.eff.org/Net_culture/Virtual_community/well_figallo.article
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Gulbranson, Mathea