Future of News video from 1981: epitome of dumb futurism
This "future of news" news report from 1981 invites us to imagine sitting down with our morning cup of coffee and getting the news from our computers (it only takes two hours to transmit the day's paper, at $5/hour on the dialup network).
This is pretty much the epitome of what's wrong with corporate futurism: it assumes that things will change in a way that enhances the corporation's ability to get the job done (which, of course, it does), but without changing things in ways that enhance the world's ability to clobber the corporation's bottom line.
Other examples:
* The Internet will enable us to deliver pay-on-demand movies to our viewers' homes (but it won't let them get those movies without paying for them)
* The Internet will enable us to save money on our long-distance trunks (but it won't let callers bypass the tariff-based telephone system altogether)
* The Internet will enable the police to coordinate international investigations (but it won't let criminals coordinate their activities to evade the police)
Add your own to the comment thread, below: entirely notional, valueless prizes will be awarded for especially juicy examples!
How the Future of Online News Looked in 1981 (via Futurismic)
Update: Mark did this back in January (I was away that weekend!), but I still want to hear your answers!
the latest
latest episodes
lately I've had dejavu browsing boingboing, I see something online, and then I see it posted. I should submit more links! Anyhow paperless office anyone?
I'm 99% sure this clip was posted here already, but "OWNS HOME COMPUTER" still sounds cool under your name.
The Internet will enable people in developing countries to conduct business with people in developed countries, but there's no way any fraud or mischief will result from it.
The Internet will allow people who are of the age of consent to meet for possible romance.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/01/30/1981-video-about-onl.html
I will be interested to see how the comments fall in this one. In Mark's post, he gives no opinion and no one posts anything all that critical in response.
The Internet will allow a single hacker to control not only all the traffic lights in LA, but the subway system as well, enabling his co-conspirators to abscond with $27 million in gold bricks.
Sorry, I just finished watching The Italian Job. Let's see, what else...
The Internet will allow companies to alert their customers when valuable new products become available, such as vi@gr@ and pr0n.
Comment Deleted by Mods
Do not Troll
Pointing out that The Internet
will allow individuals and groups from the world over to share their thoughts feelings and opinions with each other in text(But it wont let users deviate from the subject or be rude inflammatory or trollish)
Is still Trolling
The Internet will allow the spread of "the Good Book", but not of godless heathen sedition.
The Internet will speed the spread of information but not of disinformation.
It was a short, light, news piece. Is it really surprising they didn't analyse the implications too deeply? Especially as all the the $5/hour *2 hours comment was just saying that the prototype isn't nearly ready for the mass market yet.
the internet will allow you to move large amounts of money with grateful blessings from you to republic of Nigeria, where a friend of mine (recently deceased) is in possession of a considerable sum which must be moved urgently.
I think we can all agree that $10 per paper is a small price to pay for no more ink on your fingers.
Although, now I'm thinking it would possibly be cheaper to laminate each page from the paper and get the same results...
The Internet will allow you to share ideas and collaborate.
Too bad some of those ideas are plans for school shootings and other such activities and most of that collaboration consist of grammatical critique and pointing out superficial flaws in presented ideas and arguments.
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All this communication will surely make us better understand each other and bring us all together in peace.
Too bad it actually keeps us far apart and removes all extremely important nuances from the communication. Online anyone can learn to act like an autistic sociopath, and may bring that with them into the real life.
What about the internet, that means that stock brokers set up their quarters right next to Wall Street, because 2 miles further out their latency would be so high, that other people could beat them to their trades? At the same time, it is of course impossible for a German to transfer money from one account to another in less than 2-3 days. You know, they have to be handled and checked and all the administration ... THAT TAKES TIME!!!
It is also the internet that made everything that has made accounting and digital information transfer so much easier and efficient, that there have never been so many people shoveling numbers from one file to another in such an efficient way that one in twenty people make their living doing nothing else than finance, insurance or real estate in the USA.
The internet is also the place where you could potentially establish a library with each and every book that has ever been written and all music that has ever been recorded and every movie ever shot and make it available to everyone in even the poorest places of the planet - much better than the famous Library of Alexandria - if only SOMEBODY COULD PAY FOR IT !!!1!
The Internet will provide individuals with instant communication, enabling decades long relationships with people around the world without actually ever having to meet them in person.
Portable internet devices will further isolate people right next to each other in the meat world
who would rather check their sms, phone calls, or listen to mp3s.
When I was in law school in 1981, on line legal research was used to locate case citations which you then would look up in the books in the law library. Reading cases on line was too expensive (and time consuming). There was some thought that eventually you could read the cases on line, but more of a convenience to make sure you had the right line of cases.
Now, I work in a law office where no case law books are kept except for what we had before they became unnecessary. A few references are useful in book form, but I could, and did, operate a law office with one book (the state laws and rules). Everything is online. Much of it can be obtained free (with some extra time and effort), but the old law book publishers provide useful services worth paying for.
I haven't seen this video yet so I can't quite judge, but if you haven't seen this, I'd suggest it as a the Worst. Singularity. Ever. Shockingly bad take on virtual worlds, Hollywood-video games, and sex — so bad I can't even bring myself to stamp it with "ludicrous". At least it's (sadly) funny, along with some reasons why: http://tr.im/gDMP
the internet will allow individual's to post massive amount of sensitive personal information to publically viewable locations facilitating identity theft on a level never before seen. banks and other organizations will roll out paid credit monitoring services to take advantage of the increasing fears over identity theft while still doing very little to protect you or your assets. also, some of these new service providers will be fronts for further identity and credit card theft.
the internet will also allow individuals to post the details of every last minutia in their daily lives, in real time as it happens. world productivity will drop as we become a world of voyeurs more interested in reading about john's walk to the corner store to buy a litre of milk than in actively participating in our own life "stories".
i recall doing a college paper in late 80 or early 81 about something called "videotext" and Gannett papers were big participants, along with Knight Ridder. I really felt funny telling folks about 'on-demand' content; they thought I was nuts!
the internet will make available long-obsolete media, produced incidentally, and not for its long-term value, for others to draw ironic conclusions about, allowing the blindness, limitations and stupidity of all previous generations to be demonstrated, while offering opportunities for self-regarding individuals in the present to create self-congratulatory comparisons with their own incisive, far seeing 20-20 hindsight.
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unfortunately for the self-regarding individuals (aka 'bloggers'), the above will continue to be true.
Look Around You did a funny spoof of futurism in music with 'Music 2000.' :)
For those not familiar, Look Around You is a modern-day British parody of 1980's educational television. The episode had three '1980's' guests trying to predict what music would be like in 2000, and of course, was about as accurate as this. ;)
"If you want to copy something you can print it out and save it."
Priceless.
The Internet will improve cooperation among countries and societies (but won't increase the ability of countries and societies to interfere with each other's communications or commerce)
The Internet will enable us to deliver our side of the story to people's homes (but it won't teach us to listen)
The Internet will enable your next potential employer to find any comment you've ever submitted to a blog, take it out of context, and use it to embarrass you during your first (and probably last) interview; also using such evidence as a rational not to employ you. So don't say fuck on the web.
Ah fuck...
The Internet will enhance your meat life by helping you form lasting relationships with your ISP by having them screw up your DSL configuration whenever it rains, and not being capable of understanding that this is a software issue and insisting on sending a technician to your premises each and every time.
(Note that this feature may only be available to AT&T customers.)
the internet will enable everyone everywhere to talk freely across international boundaries and realize they really do hate each other and there is a reason why humanity hunkers down in mutually hostile tribes.
And don't forget how the internet will allow us to be snooty about people 30 years in the past for not anticipating exactly how the future will play out.
Good one Takuan :^)
I love how the advertisement for the Examiner showed something that would only really be possible in about twenty years, which is to make a newspaper present as it does IRL, sorta. Like the current cover of the New York Times online.
I can remember sitting in a design meeting in the 80's about some interactive TV project in Florida that envisioned an interactive shopping experience complete with storefronts in a mall and corridors and the idea of drifting around from place to place in a 3D environment. That idea seems to resurface from time to time; it just won't die.
Can you imagine how annoying online shopping would be if you had to tolerate all that animation between you and the information of product you want?
Can I just say that I was sitting here with my morning coffee reading the headlines (and BoingBoing) when I stumbled across this?
The internet will allow corporations to outsource low-skill repetitive work such as transcription to labor in cheaper countries.
The internet will allow people in impoverished economies to make income from doing things that corporations have deemed impossible due to the low return and repetitiveness of the task, such as `outsourcing' gold mining in MMORPGS or solving captchas for a penny each for spamhouses.
$0.26 for a copy of the Examiner? That WAS 1981! Ironic that it's free now, and worth even less than the paper it's printed on.
In the future, people will gather around to giggle at how laughably bad past futurism was (they will also engage in their own futurism, entirely ignoring the moral of the story).
the internet will create truly interactive democracy where every voice is heard by the government and then compiled onto lists for the death camps.
In the future everyone will have the same haircut and the same clothes.
In the future everyone will be very fat from the starchy diet.
In the future everyone will be very thin from not having enough to eat.
In the future it will be next to impossible to tell girls from boys, even in bed.
In the future men will be "super-masculine" and women will be "ultra-feminine."
In the future half of us will be "mentally ill."
In the future there will be no religion or spiritualism of any sort.
In the future the "psychic arts" will be put to practical use.
In the future we will not think that "nature" is beautiful.
In the future the weather will always be the same.
In the future no one will fight with anyone else.
In the future there will be an atomic war.
In the future water will be expensive.
In the future all material items will be free.
In the future everyone's house will be like a little fortress.
In the future everyone's house will be a total entertainment center.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very happy.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very filthy.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very healthy.
In the future TV will be so good that the printed word will function as an art form only.
In the future people with boring jobs will take pills to relieve the boredom.
In the future no one will live in cities.
In the future there will be mini-wars going on everywhere.
In the future everyone will think about love all the time.
In the future political and other decisions will be based completely on opinion polls.
In the future there will be machines which will produce a religious experience in the user.
In the future there will be groups of wild people, living in the wilderness.
In the future there will be only paper money, which will be personalized.
In the future there will be a classless society.
In the future everyone will only get to go home once a year.
In the future everyone will stay home all the time.
In the future we will not have time for leisure activities.
In the future we will only "work" one day a week.
In the future our bodies will be shriveled up but our brains will be bigger.
In the future there will be starving people everywhere.
In the future people will live in space.
In the future no one will be able to afford TV.
In the future the helpless will be killed.
In the future everyone will have their own style of way-out clothes.
In the future we will make love to anything anytime anywhere.
In the future there will be so much going on that no one will be able to keep track of it.
In The Future by David Byrne from The Knee Plays 1985.
I like the ignorance of most web sites. For instance, the web is part of the internet. Or the predictions of internet pundits that in the future home cheap computers are what will allow people to get on the internet. Negroponte even got it wrong.
The majority of the world experiences the internet and messages each other through cell phones.
How about: In the future, all of the collective knowledge of mankind will be at the fingertips of everyone 'round the globe, and all of it will be true!
I'm the only one who noticed it was done on a Tandy CoCo, my first computer! Radio Shack made a video terminal based on the Coco that was intended for online news services as depicted in the video.
Dow Jones even had a dialup service in production; as did GE and several other large datacenters.
People have no sense of history.
The future has not happened.
It's 2009 and I'm watching low resolution video the size of a playing card that stalls every 20 seconds.
I work as a network engineer in the private sector. I am in the middle of a move and have all of my IT equipment disconnected and in storage. All that stands between me and the world wide web is my Macbook Pro and a Comcast cable modem. And yet I had to endure six (6) separate stalls when watching that video.
The real winners here are the American ISPS. They've artificially kept the price of access high and the quality of service low. There's no incentive to improve service when we happily pay $49.95 for service that cannot stream a 3 minute video without stalling. In addition to this, they're experimenting with traffic throttling to make doubly sure I don't get to actually use $49.95 dollars worth of service each month.
Perhaps it wasn't the news papers, but in the end a big corporation did win.
That's a Tandy CoCo in the video! My first computer. Tandy made a version of my computer specifically for using online services. Some will be reminded of early early proto-WebTV, but it was really a dumb terminal in color.
There were online news services in 1981 like Dow Jones. It may be fun for the commentariat here to make fun of oldskool stuff, but these services were very much ongoing for their time. I never had a modem only because it was very expensive for this student leaving high school to go to college and the services more so (anyone remember Bibliographic Research Service and their "BRS at Nite"?) (Browsing through Google Books and Popular Science reveals that online services were sold to regular users as far back as 1969, but the terminals were too expensive for most.)
Yes, things didn't come out as the corporates expected back then, and that's mostly for the better. But don't think that makes one smart to make fun of those days, else someone in BoingBoing in 2053 has every right to make fun of us and I hope they do.
In the future, the Internet will allow everyone to get every kind of entertainment they want for absolutely free. It will also allow you to make huge sums of money by selling directly to the consumers.. who.. already get everything.. for free.. oh yeah, oops.
in the future, computers and the internet will be thousands of times faster (and yet, will still somehow not be fast enough)