I was in a meeting last week where we spent easily half an hour puzzling through how we ought to cover ChatGPT, even though the call was meant to be about something else entirely. I've noticed this happening a few times recently. Everyone is talking about generative AI and no one really knows where it's headed. The editors on this particular call were talking primarily about feature coverage. How, we all wondered aloud, do you assign a magazine story that won't come out for several months on a subject that's evolving at warp speed? What if the resulting article is dated or wrong—or both?
The WIRED archives offer a possible answer. In the magazine's early days, writers often took to its pages to make sweeping, dramatic predictions about how this or that technology would disrupt life as we know it. Some of these theories proved uncannily prescient. Others, well, not so much. I know I've written about this before, but these stories never fail to delight me. Reading them, I've come to appreciate how useful and provocative a prophecy can be, even, or perhaps especially, when it kind of misses the mark.
MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte's 2002 column on why Wi-Fi will be the thing to transform telecom falls into this category. "3G is too little too soon," he wrote, "with none of the attributes of a real generational shift." Perhaps there's some merit to this. Admittedly, I'm not a subject matter expert. But I think it's probably safe to say that mobile internet connections—like 3G and its successors 4G and 5G—have precipitated a pretty dramatic shift in how many people connect to the internet.
Still, Negroponte's column is a delight for the way it captures a moment and forces you to think about how, exactly, history proved him wrong. I'm curious to hear what you all think of his predictions. I'd also love to know whether you feel it's wise to publish hot takes and prognostications? Let me know what you think in the comments below the story.
See you next week!
Eve
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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