An optimistic forecast Analysis/Commentary Technological forecasts usually go wrong because they fail to adjust to the unpredictable leaps of human thinking, the randomness of human emotion, and the plausible though improbable twists of historical events. Traditional forecasts usually build on a present slowly slipping into the past, or try to levitate one age into another. That obviously doesn't work. When conditions change, traditions dissolve. Thought follows a snake-like adaptation to the curvature of time. A future Web might possibly gain impact from social momentum, rather than technical momentum. That is to say, the Web will operate more as a force of change than as a medium per se. By bringing people together, by creating a common workplace for very different people, the Web will destroy temporal and spatial distance. It will explode the notion of community, of "us" and "them," and "here" and "there." It will defuse the threat of physical intimidation, the bullying mores and norms of locales and like-minded people. In short, it will force new ways of socializing upon the people of the Earth. A first forecast for the future of the Web, then, is that it will help dissolve the traditional, organic bonds of localities -- whether governments, institutions, or self-sustaining cultures. At the place of a racial or hereditary community, we will have interacting groups willing to communicate, to work together, and to form networks of association. Commerce on the Web will be one of these venues for change, leading perhaps to "supra-geographic" economies, to an overall Internet economy. In a Net economy, resources would flow with the networks of communication, not based on convenient land passages, friendly seas, or adjoining territories. In a Net economy, also, individuals will have a multicultural rather than unicultural identity. A second forecast for the Web is that it will eventually enrich the emancipated individual at the expense of traditional gatekeepers and other control agents. Already, the Web poses a problem to institutions by removing barriers to knowledge, through shared culture, idea exchange, and self-expression. From a political economy of idea-generation, we pass to a pragmatic economy of idea-competition. That is to say, by removing the barriers of status and political influence, the Internet leads to personal emancipation. Third, forecasters probably overestimate the magic of gadgets and gizmos. Sure, we will inherit more appliances, but we may also evolve new forms of value that don't necessarily depend on those new machines or devices. Value in the past has depended heavily on the exploitation of one individual by another. Who believes in authoritarianism believes in slavery. So far, the hoarding of knowledge and influence and the sheer incompetence of average people to raise and educate their children have created divisions that facilitate privilege and exploitation. Ignorance seldom seems related to individual potential; rather, it seems socially inculcated by means of emotional and intellectual neglect and misapplication of authority. Hopefully, the world of the future will have fewer and better people in it: fewer bosses and more volunteers; fewer extravagant appliances and more pragmatic technologies -- technologies aimed at removing the meaningless labor, mindless repetition of mechanical tasks, and all the misbegotten value attached to these sordid pursuits. Let intelligent machines whittle their lives away in senseless cycles. Hopefully, the world of the future will learn to put practical needs before political urges, meaningful pursuit before mere labor, volunteerism before bossism, and progress far to the front, where the optimism of our age should, and probably does, reside. November 10, 1999