> I'm not aware of a single cynic who successfully predicted how things actually ended up turning out.

Let's change that here and now! :)

I was one of the optimists in the very early 2000s when I attended a talk by Columbia professor Eli Noam. In 2002, he wrote an article in the Financial Times called "Why the internet is bad for democracy" which essentially predicted the world is we know it.

I immediately saw that he was right, at least with regard to the fact that it COULD turn out as it has, in fact, turned out. He fundamentally changed my view, way back then. In 2005 a version was published in a more academic context: “Why the Internet is bad for democracy.” Communications of the ACM 48(10): 57–58 (2005).

Here's the FT version: https://www.citicolumbia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Why-...

RMS has seen our troubles with non-free software as early as in 80s. What he has not predict that the software has find even more cruel way of shipping - disservices which do not even allow the freedom 0.

BTW the statement about democracy is not a lie - everyone knows some big and small revolutions happened after someone's post in social networks. Also such things as anonymous news sources, torrents and bitcoin has democraticized a whole lot of things in our lives.

You should play Metal Gear Solid 2, or at least watch the last codec call[1]. See how much you can apply what it talks about to the current year. This game came out a month after 9/11.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKl6WjfDqYA

"AI will democratize education and information access as everyone will have their own personal tutor and librarian!"

History repeats

Earth by David Brin and Ender’s Game made some predictions in this area

It did, then piracy happened, couple revolutions in Middle East followed, and the crackdown on English-speaking social media began.

At least in the US, each person has a lot more than one representative they vote for, with multiple levels of government with different intended scopes. As much as that doesn't completely eliminate the problems you describe, I'd argue that that focus on only the first election listed in the ballot at the expense of the others is one of the (many) causes of how we ended in the state we are today. It's a lot easier for someone to be elected to represent you while ignoring your interests if you don't even know or care about the fact that they're running. If people cared more about local elections (and even federal elections other than for president), there would be at least some increase in pressure for legislative bodies to respond to the will of the people. Without that, the issue isn't even that they're going the opposite of what the people who voted for them want, but the the number of people who voted for them (or even for the candidates they're running against) aren't anywhere close to representative proportion of the population. We don't really know if representative democracy would approximate actual democracy because the people they're representing aren't the full population, but the small segment of politically active ones.

A few ounces is all we need!

https://www.wired.com/story/weight-of-the-internet/

I remember buying print magazines that published the hottest new URLs, with screenshots!

Yes I've thought the same. It's pretty cool. Not terribly functional but yeah

Ha ha. I meant the particular snapshotted internet.zip with alleged file size on that site.

It became part of the hologram that is the universe and time....