25 years ago, Peter Leyden predicted the boom of digitalization – but also warned of a pandemic, the climate catastrophe and Russian aggression. Now he predicts what’s coming next.
Science fiction writer William Gibson recently tweeted a snippet with ten bleak predictions from a 25-year-old cover story in “Wired” magazine, calling it “perversely pessimistic at the time.” The tweet went viral. But those “spoilers” were really just an appendage to the larger story, which predicted a “long boom” and the blessings and benefits of a digital society. ZEIT ONLINE spoke with one of the two authors, Peter Leyden, exactly a quarter century after the story was published.