The information highway as revolution or evolution?
Stuart L. Esrock · New Jersey Journal of Communication · 1997
The potential of the information highway to revolutionize communication has become a popular media topic. This article, however, suggests that society is more likely in the midst of an information evolution. The author uses new media technology and forecasting literatures as a framework to evaluate current technology developments and public discussion about the information highway. In addition to delineating a series of technological, political, and economic factors that mitigate revolutionary development, the article compares the hopeful rhetoric that surrounds the information highway to the similar, unfulfilled discourse that accompanied previous innovations. The author points toward an historical tendency for over‐estimation of diffusion and exaggerated claims about benefits for previous technologies as additional factors that point toward an evolution.