'Future Pop' prediction (from 1980).

[NancyJohnson]

Over the last couple of days, I've been opening a load of long-sealed boxes that have sat languishing in my garage for the best part of 12 years. I unearthed an almanac called 'The Book Of Predictions' by David Wallechinsky, which dates back to 1980.

While it's pages are full of predictions of a pending apocalypse (this was different times kids), spacestations and bases on the moon, flipping through the pages, I came across the following piece by Charlie Gillett ([url="http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FCharlie_Gillett&h=3AQG3jV28&enc=AZMU3a2DtEDqIU5v8X39TO6hbMnSh_s5O_fTA7EU8ulkysxauxb59Drzw957xXwzCpYYSCzihFSLjonC23BVoDovVITyd8KFeNnFAANYCluKqvfwVRoS6hmp08U5VariHU4Nlhs2tmb5DLcr7-3D7Elg&s=1"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Gillett[/url]), whose predictions for 'Future Pop' was pretty much spot on. I've scanned it here and thought some of you might be interested in reading it.

Bear in mind this predates CDs by a few years as well, it's pretty spot on, considering how things have evolved following the shake up/fallout started by Shaun Fanning. Elsewhere, he predicts the decline of the major labels and the ways music will get out there in a world dominated by corporate radio. Interesting stuff.
P

[ahpook]

Creepily prescient

Edited April 4, 2014 by ahpook

[Dave Vader]

Scary Biscuits.

Everything for a fee

[JamesBass]

That's scarily on the money! Let's hope music doesn't degenerate as far as he predicts!

[neepheid]

It's OK, Robocop sorted out all the street violence. We're good, ta

[tonyquipment]

Quaid open your mind

[xgsjx]

Now had you opened that box 10-15 years ago, you could have been the inventor of Spotify.

[NancyJohnson]

[quote name='xgsjx' timestamp='1396615648' post='2415713']
Now had you opened that box 10-15 years ago, you could have been the inventor of Spotify.
[/quote]

How do you know I'm not, eh?

[TheGreek]

Any tips about this weeks lottery numbers??

[spongebob]

Amazing!

[xgsjx]

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1396623473' post='2415790']
How do you know I'm not, eh?
[/quote]

Because I am!

[flyfisher]

Interesting article, though I'd say it got one thing badly wrong - the bit about everything being available for a fee.

In the 1980s I did a lot of work for British Telecom Research Labs helping to develop and enhance their 'Prestel' information service. This was a system whereby people could access pages of information via their telephone line and a TV set equipped with teletext. The basic idea was to provide richer content than the free teletext service(ceefax/oracle) that people would be prepared to pay for. My involvement was the development of something called 'photovideotex' which added the capability to display colour photographs as well as basic text. Because the technology at the time was 8-bit micros and 9600 baud modems, image data compression was paramount and the work eventually led to the jpeg standard (the jpeg chairman at the time worked for BT labs). I mention all this to show that such ideas and implementations were well advanced by the 1980s but it was all on a commercial basis with everything to be eventually funded by people paying for each page of information they accessed, from fractions of a penny to (perhaps) pounds per page depending on the value, and this is the prevailing view expressed in that prediction article.

But, all that changed in the early 1990s when the World Wide Web took off and stripped commercial organisations, such as BT, of pretty much all control over content. organisations quickly learned that they couldn't actually 'own' content any more and sell it for whatever they wanted. By democratising the power of the web, people all over the work were able to contribute their own content, and far quicker than any organisation could. A classic example is Encyclopedia Britannica - a once dominant and respected source of information was superseded, almost overnight, by its contributors being able to share their knowledge directly with no need for a middleman to broker their contribution. Thus, overnight, EB disappeared and wikipedia became the 'go to' source of general knowledge across the world. There is not a company or government) on the planet that could have achieved that.

So yes, that article was correct about music, and other information, being available via "household information centers" (PCs) "plugged into libraries of information" (the web), but it was wrong about having to pay for the vast majority of available content - much to the chagrin of the business world that has sought ways to make money from the web ever since it began. Of course, there are some subscription services out there, but they pale into insignificance compared to the amount of freely available information, music and video available on the web. THAT, I'd say, is the real triumph of the world wide web - and long may it last.