An old New York Times article predicting, in broad terms, the rise and impact of the Internet, published on the day Becky was born — June 14, 1982 — is making the rounds on Twitter tonight. The article reports on an NSF-affiliated study that, once you get past the silly names (“teletext and videotex”), is remarkably prescient in many ways. Lede:
A report commissioned by the National Science Foundation and made public today speculates that by the end of this century electronic information technology will have transformed American home, business, manufacturing, school, family and political life.
The report suggests that one-way and two-way home information systems, called teletext and videotex, will penetrate deeply into daily life, with an effect on society as profound as those of the automobile and commercial television earlier in this century.
More:
”Videotex systems create opportunities for individuals to exercise much greater choice over the information available to them,” the researchers wrote. ”Individuals may be able to use videotex systems to create their own newspapers, design their own curricula, compile their own consumer guides.
”On the other hand, because of the complexity and sophistication of these systems, they create new dangers of manipulation or social engineering, either for political or economic gain. Similarly, at the same time that these systems will bring a greatly increased flow of information and services into the home, they will also carry a stream of information out of the home about the preferences and behavior of its occupants.”
The report stressed what it called ”transformative effects” of the new technology, the largely unintended and unanticipated social side effects. … Such effects, it added, were likely to become apparent in home and family life, in the consumer marketplace, in the business office and in politics.