Science fiction writer Greg Bear in a 1994 interview with me on WNUA-FM, Chicago, on the future of the Internet:
“It’s going to be a huge intellectual telephone line, with graphics and library materials, all available at a few minutes’ notice. That, I think, will be revolutionary. ... We have a lot of people from the entertainment industries thinking it’s going to be a lot of the same old, same old — where they can simply market movies in new ways, and I don’t think it’s going to be that way at all. ... The people who are loosely called Generation Xers are going to have their say on this. And I think we may not be able to predict what they’re going to do with it.”
Update, Jan. 4, 2018: A later interview with Greg Bear, from 1996, when we talked about the prospect of life on Mars.
“It’s going to be a huge intellectual telephone line, with graphics and library materials, all available at a few minutes’ notice. That, I think, will be revolutionary. ... We have a lot of people from the entertainment industries thinking it’s going to be a lot of the same old, same old — where they can simply market movies in new ways, and I don’t think it’s going to be that way at all. ... The people who are loosely called Generation Xers are going to have their say on this. And I think we may not be able to predict what they’re going to do with it.”
Update, Jan. 4, 2018: A later interview with Greg Bear, from 1996, when we talked about the prospect of life on Mars.
2 comments:
He was right; the net remains, fundamentally, organic (ironic, isn't it?). The more that some larger entity tries to squeeze it, the more it runs out into smaller avenues that defy a stranglehold.
Wasn't it somewhere in the 1990s that we defined America's most business as "information"? Welp, few of us can or want to do without fast access to knowing what's going on somewhere, from a bank account to the BBC world news.
The combined punches to bring down pirate bay only opened it up to hundreds, perhaps more, copies, all open-sourced clones that have spawned eztv and more. There was/is an international competition to design the next best one, too. Can it happen? I'll flip ya my Bitcoin for the answer….
Greg Bear is one of modern science fiction's awesome writers.His books are known for their bleeding edge hard science,rich characterization and distinctive illustration of the effect science and technology have on our general public.
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