"But what makes it particularly interesting is the way he is wrong. He’s convinced that broadcast media will die because people are going to demand comprehensive and factually accurate information, they’ll find it on the internet, and they’ll pay for it. The Internet has been about-to-end-journalism-as-we-know-it since before the days of Netscape Navigator. And journalism has definitely changed! The peril is real! I like Mediasaurus as a reminder that the digital news crisis is not so new."
Writes Dave Karpf in "A WIRED compendium/Dusting off a curated list of old WIRED articles" (Substack). Karpf, an internet politics professor, is dedicated to studying the archive of WIRED magazine. At the link are summaries of 68 articles — 3 from each year, from 1993 to 2017.
"The magazine’s earliest days are filled with wild, confident predictions about how digital technology is about to change the world. Much of this was too-early, but you can, at moments, pick out the shape of things to come."
I found the article through this Metafilter post, but I couldn't find a comment worth quoting. Someone wants to know why Karpf didn't find more articles written by women. They laugh, predictably, at the 1999 article predicting we'd be able to send smells through the internet.
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55 comments:
The internet did end journalism. Crichton was off by a few years, but ad revenue turned traditional American media into clickbait. I'd give him credit for his prediction.
Crichton was mostly correct. The MSM is dead. It lies, censors and coverups for the Dems. Actually, Orwell was more correct.
Timing may have been off, but not sure he was wrong about this one - newspapers hide behind pay walls and see their revenues drying up, broadcast and cable news are viewed by a fraction of what they were in 1993, news magazines effectively have ceased to exist. Only thing he really got wrong was the notion that people want comprehensive and factually accurate info. No one wants "truth," they only want "their truth."
"Someone wants to know why Karpf didn't find more articles written by women."
So what's the answer? Did women at the time comment much at all, or is Karpf's sample based?
More broadly, how will future histories of the media/internet revolution assess women's roles? Minimal on the technical and business side, major in content creation?
How will that history be written anyway? For example, Althouse by herself has created more content, including media commentary, than just about anyone, but in some ways the blog has been hiding in plain sight--so how should it be covered?
Maybe the question is superfluous since future histories will all be written by AI bots.
Crichton is correct. Its just the speed at which the death is occurring is slower than he predicted. He is far more correct, than say...Paul Ehrlich, x5. Or John Kerry, x∞.
It's sure killing newspapers. I mean not the NYT but most the others. Our local daily is a pathetic shell of what it once was. I've tried to upgrade my subscription (hubby likes to read it front to back) but there's evidently nobody answering the phone at Circulation anymore, or reading their online signups.
The magazine’s earliest days are filled with wild, confident predictions about how digital technology is about to change the world. Much of this was too-early, but you can, at moments, pick out the shape of things to come.
I read once that you can either predict the facts or you can predict the timing. It takes great luck to predict both.
Isn’t it weird how the Internet then evolved with “fact checkers” and secret censorship so that they could pretend to be Fact and Truth and even named their internal Stasi their “Trust and Safety Council” to further the charade. Crichton is correct. People crave Truth and want to be convinced they are getting it. Too bad Big Tech sold their souls to the Devil and now can’t correct course.
It's pretty clear that somebody was going to have to provide content or information for the internet, so "the media" was going to continue in one form or another, but the disruption and upheaval were so great that it's nitpicking to say that Crichton was wrong.
In some ways, getting it right and getting it wrong are so mixed up that it's hard to come to a final judgment: if people were willing to pay for information over the internet the media would be doing better than it is. It's the fact that so many people aren't willing to pay (and to believe) that is hurting the established media.
" ... people are going to demand comprehensive and factually accurate information, they’ll find it on the internet ... "
And we'll have chatGPT to thank for that -- if and when that time ever comes. I'm skeptical.
Only thing he really got wrong was the notion that people want comprehensive and factually accurate info. No one wants "truth," they only want "their truth."
Yes, I also was surprised by that prediction. In wealthy societies such as ours the goal is maximize pleasure and minimize pain. This leads to immaturity (since development requires unpleasantness) and addiction (I can afford to habitually remove myself from reality). Genghis Khan observed this trend and refused to pamper his children, even requiring them to work their way up through his army with no favoritism (quite a father).
The Drudge Report ended journalism in 1998 when it leaked the censored NBC Lewinsky scoop.
The global media response was a war of retrenchment by those financially-dependent on paying customers. Yellow journalism and head-in-the-sand partisan playpens became the norm, even as anyone could get great and accurate uncensored info by digging and doing their own quality control.
Quoting Lincoln:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
American media has diversified... individual, not color.
they’ll find it on the internet, and they’ll pay for it.
??? PAY for it? Good GOD! I won't even pay for Porn..I'm SURE Not going to pay for "news"
Can't remember the last time I purchased a physical newspaper or magazine, even at an airport or train station.
"people are going to demand comprehensive and factually accurate information, they’ll find it on the internet"
That, sadly, is the part he got wrong. But people were different in 1993. I was 24 years old. Generation X. There's no way it could be predicted how the millennials and not yet born Generation Z would turn out, nor he affect growing up with the internet and smart phones have.
Social media created tribalism. Everyone is entrenched. Truths be damned. The ramp up in American and global propaganda spiked. Americans aren't as smart as they used to be, and most have the attention span of a goldfish. We're stuck here.
Also, the free flow of information on the internet ironically brought forth a new desire for censorship and diminishing freedom of speech. All of it pushed for those in power by an obedient MSM and Education Establishment. They're not going to change.
His only error was failure to anticipate the complete transformation from news gathering to regime propaganda.
Turns out that it’s only necessary to fool some of the people all of the time.
The editor of our now-defunct alt weekly said it was Craigslist killed their business, and by implication was killing the dailies, too.
That was 15 years ago.
One of Crichton’s most predictive book that has held up is “State of Fear”.
I don’t think WIRED is good at even understanding current events.
'Ok boomer'- the long form.
Like Orwell in 1984, he was off a few years.
Crichton saw the global warming scam earlier than most. His main point was it's hubris to think we can control nature.
I would bet (without evidence) just about every Pornhub video has way more circulation than anything put up by the news media. It's the elephant in the room.
"Someone wants to know why Karpf didn't find more articles written by women."
The answer to that is easy. You see, in those days women were routinely born in a manly body, but unlike now, they just stayed trapped there and kept it secret. Until Bruce Jenner came along and... tore down the manly phallus, opening the door to countless women suffering in silence.
So, who knows how many women wrote articles for WIRED with their birth misassigned name.
Crichton was right, but not in the right way. People ARE paying for accurate information, but it's not the public.
It's the rich. They truly understand the value of accurate information and are willing to pay for it.
Imagine if you knew the real inflation rate? Imagine how that benefits your stock portfolio knowing what the real number is. Not the number the government provides to the masses to massage news coverage by their "friends" in the media.
The public is stuck believing that the inflation rate is 6.5%.
The rich know exactly what the real number is and have long-since traded on that information before you even are fed it.
Wired was a very interesting magazine.
>"The magazine’s earliest days are filled with wild, confident predictions about how digital technology is about to change the world. Much of this was too-early, but you can, at moments, pick out the shape of things to come."<
I haven't read most of the articles on the list but I promise you, Bill Joy's seminal 2001 piece, 'Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,' was way early but certainly not too early, and didn't require any "picking out." It was nothing but the shape of things to come. And its eery, and accurate, predictions are now approaching end point of fruition.
Crichton's view of global warming, which he presented at Cal Tech in 2003, is a worthwhile long read. Its flippant title: "Aliens Caused Global Warming" belies its thoughtfulness. A lighthearted excerpt:
"Let's think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport."
There's something weird about the dates here. Crichton supposedly made this prediction in 1993. The article author states "The Internet has been about-to-end-journalism-as-we-know-it since before the days of Netscape Navigator", suggesting that the author thinks such claims have been made long before Crichton made his. But Netscape Navigator came out in 1994, so that would make Crichton's prediction on the front edge of that timeframe tied to the introduction of Netscape Navigator.
What am I missing here?
Did he wear welding goggles while doing his research
Mike is wrong about it being a good magazine. It was a great magazine. I never missed an issue in the 90s. It went to hell after Conde naste bought it.
John Henry
Dave Begley said...
Crichton was mostly correct. The MSM is dead. It lies, censors and coverups for the Dems. Actually, Orwell was more correct.
I agree that Crichton was right more than he was wrong, but neither he nor Orwell attacked Democrats while ignoring Republican catastrophes like Trump's Jan 6. You have just provided proof that social media on the Internet is more opinion than fact.
Newspapers will exist as long as people own pets.
Given that he died in 2008, it would be interesting to know if anyone in the media predicted back then that Michael Crichton would be gone in 15 years.
1969 calls 2023
1969: Hey, we went to the moon, how much further have you gone?
silence
1969 hangs up
1968: Well, what did they say?
1969: They want to know what a woman is.
gadfly shows us that Trump is still living in his head, to the exclusion of any thought.
Crichton's death was a terrible loss to civilization, leaving us with idiots like gadfly instead.
I wonder what Crichton might have said about COVID, too bad he died in 2007. He was a brilliant man.
Gadfly's been huffing glue again.
Such incoherence.
gadfly said...
I agree that Crichton was right more than he was wrong, but neither he nor Orwell attacked Democrats while ignoring Republican catastrophes like Trump's Jan 6...
Since both men were dead long before 1/6, I'm not sure what you want them to have said about it. After all, the only thing the dead can do in the modern United States is vote Democrat.
Oh, and you misspelled "Ray Epps".
In all fairness, he wasn't too far off. September 8, 2004 forever changed how a lot of us looked at the media.
It wasn't pretty then, and it's only gotten worse. But there are no illusions anymore.
Brilliant then and still correct today.
Someone wants to know why Karpf didn't find more articles written by women
LOL. Someone must be very young.
Wired was a great mag -- but not as great as Spy.
Newspapers will exist as long as.........
......there are idiots to read them.
Went to school with Michael Crichton's nephew. That's maybe my one touch with celebrity...
In any event, the guy was not the genius everyone makes him out to be. Smart? Undoubtedly. Good, entertaining writer? Yep; but, every book he wrote had the same basic plot. Kinda like Stephen King and Michener.
He saw some things clearly, some not. The demand for "accurate news" was never, ever there. People would rather be lied to, because if they were told the truth, then they'd have to do something about it. They can't be arsed to, so they prefer the sweet-smelling lie.
The average person no more wants "the Truth" than they want to really know what other people think about them. Again, it's too painful to contemplate. Mostly because they'd have to admit and acknowledge that much of their fantasy-life beliefs about their own virtues are mostly bullshit. They'd also have to do things, things they don't want to.
We'd rather live with our illusions than know truths. That's the reality; most people can't handle the fact that just about everything about them and their lives are essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things. We'd rather believe we're exceptional; that the rules aren't for us, that the world revolves around us and our petty ego needs.
There's no market for "the Truth". There's one hell of a market for the sweet-smelling lies, as Matt Drudge found out.
Enigma: Matt Drudge's speech to journalists at the National Press Club is pretty fascinating. He tells them the internet will kill their jobs. This was not really so long after Drudge started The Drudge Report while working in the gift shop at NBC, where he discovered that the gift shop storeroom was where the giants of the news industry had their documents staged to be shredded.
He went from selling logo mugs and t-shirts to becoming the most powerful force in driving news traffic on the internet by nipping secret news communications from a storage room.
I threw out my TV in 1971 because I was disgusted with the news there. Here I am fascinated by the audio of this or that space mission and some lady is always talking over them about soap opera aspects they can find.
I don't get what gadfly is trying to do here. If he wants us to buy his line on Trump, why is it that he defends egregiously corrupt behavior by Biden? Maybe he is just trying to inoculate us by giving some kind of weakened strain of regime propaganda, and he is really pro-Trump.
effinayright: "Gadfly's been huffing glue again."
Gadfly hasn't been the same since maddow and tater stelter left.
Yep; but, every book he wrote had the same basic plot.
Pretty much true of genre fiction. His genre was something like "disaster science fiction." So there's the disaster and it's resolved somehow. But he also wrote novels outside the genre.
Crichton's 1993 article is here. He doesn't use the word "truth." He did assume that most users would be like he thought he was: demanding "high quality" information and impatient with gossip and trivia. He was terribly wrong about that. People go to the news now either for the trivialities and gossip or to confirm their own opinions and give them a narrative that fits with what they already believe. That very much includes people who, like Michael Crichton, have two degrees from Harvard.
Crichton was angry or bitter about being portrayed as a protectionist and racist for worrying about Japan's economic power. He couldn't see that what was said about him was not an aberration but the direction political discourse was taking. But was he really wrong about the legacy media being dinosaurs?
This is incredible! Thank you for sharing, truly.
rhhardin said...
Here I am fascinated by the audio of this or that space mission and some lady is always talking over them about soap opera aspects they can find.
umm? Hello?? space missions have ALWAYS Been, Nothing BUT soap operas..
If the United States had been serious about space missions, they would have assigned them to the Air Force
I vaguely remember a Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd gets a newspaper from the future and an article is titled, "Smellevision Replaces Television."
What's funny about future predictions is how many works of science fiction, that didn't claim to predict the future, actually did a pretty good job of doing that.
gilbar: "If the United States had been serious about space missions, they would have assigned them to the Air Force"
Snort! You owe me a keyboard.
If the man was talking about CREDIBLE news media, spot on.
Lurker21 said:
"Crichton was angry or bitter about being portrayed as a protectionist and racist for worrying about Japan's economic power. He couldn't see that what was said about him was not an aberration but the direction political discourse was taking. But was he really wrong about the legacy media being dinosaurs?"
Where's Japan's mighty economy today?
One of the things that strikes me about most of these well-known "futurist prognosticators" is that while they get some details mostly correct, there are some things that they blow, completely.
Japan, Inc. was a major one. Just like the supposed "New Ice Age" all the brights of the 1970s took as an inevitability, right along with the "Population Bomb".
The reality we're all going to have to deal with is that it's never the expected hazard that kills you; it's always the Black Swan, coming out of left field, that beans you in the head hard enough to fracture your skull.
Won't be the "Population Bomb" exploding that kills modern civilization dead, dead, dead... More than likely, it's going to be the coming population implosion when that supposed "bomb" fails to materialize, what with all the preparatory measures we've taken for it. Witness what's going on in China right now, as they try to cope with the damages of the "One Child" policy. Which is going to do unto China, Inc. what Mao's Four Pests campaign did to Chinese agriculture of the 1950s.
There are usually good reasons to ignore Cassandra. The track record of these sorts getting things right ain't what I'd characterize as even mediocre. In fact, the one thing you can almost always count on is that if it's a commonly believed prediction...? It is almost certainly not going to happen. It sure as hell won't go down the way everyone is expecting it to, no matter what.
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