{"id":4412,"date":"2010-05-26T10:18:19","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T04:18:19","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2017-02-02T19:30:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-02T19:30:58","slug":"predicting-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/predicting-the\/","title":{"rendered":"Predicting the Present, First Five Years of Wired"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3417616102_554411eafd.jpg\"
\nImage from Mark Higgison<\/a><\/p>\n

I was digging through some files the other day and found this document from 1997. It gathers a set of quotes from issues of Wired<\/em> magazine in its first five years. I don’t recall why I created this (or even if I did compile all of them), but I suspect it was for our fifth anniversary issue. I don’t think we ever ran any of it. Reading it now it is clear that all predictions of the future are really just predictions of the present. If I were compiling this list today instead of in 1998, I would have selected much different insights.<\/p>\n

Here is the 1998 document in full:<\/p>\n

We as a culture are deeply, hopelessly, insanely in love with gadgetry. And you can’t fight love and win.
\nJaron Lanier, Wired 1.02, May\/June 1993, p. 80<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

No class in history has ever risen as fast as the blue-collar worker and no class has ever fallen as fast.
\nPeter Drucker, Wired 1.03, Jul\/Aug 1993, p. 80<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the world of immersion, authorship is no longer the transmission of experience, but rather the construction of utterly personal experiences.
\nBrenda Laurel, Wired 1.06, Dec 1993, p. 107<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I expect that within the next five years more than one in ten people will wear head-mounted computer displays while traveling in buses, trains, and planes.
\nNicholas Negroponte, Wired 1.06, Dec 1993, p. 136<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Pretty soon you’ll have no more idea of what computer you’re using than you have an idea of where your electricity is generated.
\nDanny Hillis, Wired 2.01, Jan 1994, p. 103<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

If we’re ever going to make a thinking machine, we’re going to have to face the problem of being able to build things that are more complex than we can understand.
\nDanny Hillis, Wired 2.01, Jan 1994, p. 104<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Computers are the metaphor of our time.
\nJim Metzner, Wired 2.02, Feb 1994, p. 66<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday, we changed the channel; today we hit the remote; tomorrow, we’ll reprogram our agents\/filters. Advertising will not go away; it will be rejuvenated.
\nMichael Schrage, Wired 2.02, Feb 1994, p. 73<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The scarce resource will not be stuff, but point of view.
\nPaul Saffo, Wired 2.03, Mar 1994, p. 73<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The idea of Apple making a $200 anything was ridiculous to me. Apple couldn’t make a $200 blank disk.
\nBill Atkinson, Wired 2.04, Apr 1994, p. 104<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Roadkill on the information highway will be the billions who will forget there are offramps to destinations other than Hollywood, Las Vegas, the local bingo parlor, or shiny beads from a shopping network.
\nAlan Kay, Wired 2.05, May 1994, p. 77<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The future is bullshit.
\nJay Chiat, Wired 2.07, Jul 1994, p. 84<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Money is just a type of information, a pattern that, once digitized, becomes subject to persistent programmatic hacking by the mathematically skilled.
\nKevin Kelly, Wired 2.07, Jul 1994, p. 93<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In a world where information plus technology equals power, those who control the editing rooms run the show.
\nHugh Gallagher, Wired 2.08, Aug 1994, p. 86<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Some functions require domesticated robots — wild robots that have been bribed, tricked, or evolved into household roles. But the wild robot has to come first.
\nMark Tilden, Wired 2.09, Sep 1994, p. 107<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Immortality is mathematical, not mystical.
\nMike Perry, Wired 2.10, Oct 1994, p. 105<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

As the world becomes more universal, it also becomes more tribal. Holding on to what distinguishes you from others becomes very important.
\nJohn Naisbitt, Wired 2.10, Oct 1994, p. 115<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Marc Andreessen will tell you with a straight face that he expects Mosaic Communications’s Mosaic to become the world’s standard interface to electronic information.
\nGary Wolf, Wired 2.10, Oct 1994, p. 116<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Life is not going to be easy in the 21st century for people who insist on black-and-white descriptions of reality.
\nJoel Garreau, Wired 2.11, Nov 1994, p. 158<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Take Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. In mere seconds, you get an entire war — the strategy, the attack, the retreat, the recapitulation. The whole military-industrial complex is reduced to a bunny and a stuttering guy zipping across the landscape.
\nBrian Boigon, Wired 2.12, Dec 1994, p. 94<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The very distinction between original and copy becomes meaningless in a digital world — there the work exists only as a copy.
\nDaniel Pierehbech, Wired 2.12, Dec 1994, p. 158<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s hard to predict this stuff. Say you’d been around in 1980, trying to predict the PC revolution. You never would’ve come and seen me.
\nBill Gates, Wired 2.12, Dec 1994, p. 166<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

For a long time now, America has seemed like a country where most people watch television most of the time. But only recently are we beginning to notice that it is also a country where television watches us.
\nPhil Petton, Wired 3.01, Jan 1995, p. 126<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die.
\nRegis Debray, Wired 3.01, Jan 1995, p. 162<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The scary thing isn’t that computers will match our intelligence by 2008; the scary thing is that this exponential curve keeps on going, and going, and going.
\nGreg Blonder, Wired 3.03, Mar 1995, p. 107<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The future won’t be 500 channels — it will be one channel, your channel.
\nScott Sassa, Wired 3.03, Mar 1995, p. 113<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the future, you won’t buy artists’ works; you’ll buy software that makes original pieces of “their” works, or that recreates their way of looking at things.
\nBrian Eno, Wired 3.05, May 1995, p. 150<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s important to regard technology in the long sweep of history as being one with history.
\nVernor Vinge, Wired 3.06, Jun 1995, p. 161<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Sufficiently radical optimism — optimism that more and more seems to be technically feasible — raises the most fundamental questions about consciousness, identity, and desire.
\nVernor Vinge, Wired 3.06, Jun 1995, p. 161<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I believe human nature is vastly more conservative than human technologies.
\nNewt Gingrich, Wired 3.08, Aug 1995, p. 109<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We’re using tools with unprecedented power, and in the process, we’re becoming those tools.
\nJohn Brockman, Wired 3.08, Aug 1995, p. 119<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

If the Boeing 747 obeyed Moore’s Law, it would travel a million miles an hour, it would be shrunken down in size, and a trip to New York would cost about five dollars.
\nNathan Myrhvold, Wired 3.09, Sep 1995, p. 154<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Isn’t it odd how parents grieve if their child spends six hours a day on the Net but delight if those same hours are spent reading books?
\nNicholas Negroponte, Wired 3.09, Sep 1995, p. 206<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The human spirit is infinitely more complex than anything that we’re going to be able to create in the short run. And if we somehow did create it in the short run, it would mean that we aren’t so complex after all, and that we’ve all been tricking ourselves.
\nDouglas Hofstadter, Wired 3.11, Nov 1995, p. 114<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What the Net is, more than anything else at this point, is a platform for entrepreneurial activities — a free-market economy in its truest sense.
\nMarc Andreessen, Wired 3.12, Dec 1995, p. 236<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

3-D isn’t an interface paradigm. 3-D isn’t a world model. 3-D isn’t the missing ingredient. 3-D is an attribute, like the color blue.
\nF. Randall Farmer, Wired 4.01, Jan 1996, p. 117<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Without a deep understanding of the many selves that we express in the virtual, we cannot use our experiences there to enrich the real.
\nSherry Turkle, Wired 4.01, Jan 1996, p. 199<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The annoyance caused by spammers grows as the square of the size of the Net.
\nRay Jones, Wired 4.02, Feb 1996, p. 96<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much — if at all.
\nSteve Jobs, Wired 4.02, Feb 1996, p. 106-107<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Just as there is religious fundamentalism, there is a technical fundamentalism.
\nPaul Virilio, Wired 4.05, May 1996, p. 121<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

When I want to do something mindless to relax, I reinstall Windows 95.
\nJean-Louis Gassee, Wired 4.05, May 1996, p. 190<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It is doubtful that the [computer industry] as a whole has yet broken even.
\nPeter Drucker, Wired 4.08, Aug 1996, p. 116<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The most successful innovators are the creative imitators, the Number Two.
\nPeter Drucker, Wired 4.08, Aug 1996, p. 118<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

We have a predisposition in Western culture for “just do it,” whereas, I think that part of the future will be built much more around “just be it.”
\nWatts Wacker, Wired 4.09, Sep 1996, p. 168<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Revolutions aren’t made by gadgets and technology. They’re made by a shift in power, which is taking place all over the world.
\nWalter Wriston, Wired 4.10, Oct 1996, p. 205<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Wires warp cyberspace. The two points at opposite ends of a wire are, for informational purposes, the same point, even if they are on opposite sides of the planet.
\nNeal Stephenson, Wired 4.12, Dec 1996, p. 98<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Web is alive. Not as a sentient being or mega-meta-super-collective consciousness, but more like a gigantic, sprouting slime mold.
\nSteven Alan Edwards, Wired 5.04, Apr 1997<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Of all the prospects raised by the evolution of digital culture, the most tantalizing is the possibility that technology could fuse with politics to create a more civil society.
\nJon Katz, Wired 5.04, Apr 1997<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Technology is not the nameless Other. To embrace technology is to embrace, and face, ourselves.
\nDavid Cronenberg, Wired 5.05, May 1997, p. 185<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Community precedes commerce.
\nJohn Hagel, Wired 5.08, Aug 1997, p. 84<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Modern technology is a major evolutionary transition. It would be astonishing if that occurred without disrupting existing life.
\nGregory Stock, Wired 5.09, Sep 1997, p. 128<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Pollution is a measure of inefficiency, and inefficiency is lost profit.
\nJoe Maceda, Wired 5.10, Oct 1997, p. 138<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

For email, the old postcard rule applies. Nobody else is supposed to read your postcards, but you’d be a fool if you wrote anything private on one.
\nMiss Manners, Wired 5.11, Nov 1997<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The American government can stop me from going to the US, but they can’t stop my virus.
\nDark Avenger, Wired 5.11, Nov 1997<\/a> (from a side-bar item on p.270 which does not appear in the Wired digital archives, excerpting from an interview by Sarah Gordon<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

It is the arrogance of every age to believe that yesterday was calm.
\nTom Peters, Wired 5.12, Dec 1997<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image from Mark Higgison I was digging through some files the other day and found this document from 1997. It gathers a set of quotes from issues of Wired magazine in its first five years. I don’t recall why I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4412"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6475,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4412\/revisions\/6475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/thetechnium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}