The prediction, in brief:

The existence of trillions of dollars of business transactions globally that is thus far unenabled by electronic catalogs and auction markets must be keeping product designers up late trying to figure out how to unlock the treasures there.

Predictor: Lynch. Daniel C.

Prediction, in context:

In an article for InfoWorld in 1994, Jayne Levin, editor of The Internet Letter, interviews Daniel C. Lynch. He discusses the issues of organizing Web addresses and and improving consumer interaction on the Internet. He says:”The telephony people and the data people spent many years ‘whistling past each other.’ Now they are beginning to hear each other at the data-transmission level. However, at the application level the telephony people are pretty much completely in the dark about how to help customers. They talk of ‘Yellow Pages’ and ‘White Pages.’ These may look like standard locator services that are sorely needed in a worldwide network consisting of millions of users and applications, some of which need to or want to know about each other. No one has figured out how to serve that market need. Issues of privacy, cost, timeliness, intrusion and others bedevil any who enter here. So here I’d give both the telephony and data world a failing grade thus far. I see this as the next great market opportunity that is enabled by a vibrant data-transmission marketplace and an equally vibrant computerized publishing marketplace. The existence of trillions of dollars of business transactions globally that is thus far unenabled by electronic catalogs and auction markets must be keeping product designers up late trying to figure out how to unlock the treasures there.” 

Date of prediction: January 1, 1994

Topic of prediction: Economic structures

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: InfoWorld

Title, headline, chapter name: To Dream the Internetworking Dream

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Vol. 16, Issue 18, Page S72ISSN: 01996649

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: McAlister, Rory