EXPIRES: 2000

WRITTEN: 1995

The change from atoms to bits is irrevocable and unstoppable. Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living. By the year 2000, the largest industry will be information.

Nicholas Negroponte

Being Digital, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995, pp. 11-12

Written: 1995

Addressed to: by 2000

Source: Being Digital

Author: Nicholas Negroponte

Category: Technology

Annotation

Negroponte's MIT Media Lab optimism was slightly premature but directionally correct. By 2000, the dot-com bubble was peaking but the information economy had not yet overtaken manufacturing and energy. By 2020, however, the world's five most valuable companies were all technology firms. The 'atoms to bits' framing proved more durable than the timeline.

What Actually Happened

By 2000, the dot-com bubble was inflating but information was not yet the largest industry. By 2020, the top five global companies by market cap (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta) were all information companies.

#digital-revolution#information-economy#MIT-media-lab#dot-com#atoms-to-bits

2000

Photographs will be telegraphed from any distance. If there be a battle in China a hundred years hence, snapshots of its most striking events will be published in the newspapers an hour later.

John Elfreth Watkins Jr.

2035

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.

Nikola Tesla

1980

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, 'memex' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.

Vannevar Bush