Negroponte switch

In the 1980s, Professor Nicholas Negroponte of the Media Lab at MIT originated the idea that came to be known as the "Negroponte Switch".

He suggested that due to accidents of engineering history we had ended up with static devices – such as televisions – receiving their content via signals travelling over the airways, while devices which should have been mobile and personal – such as telephones – were receiving their content over static cables. It was his idea that a better use of available communication resource would result if the information (such as phone calls) going through the cables was to go through the air, and that going through the air (such as TV programmes) was to be delivered via cables. Negroponte called this "trading places," but his co-presenter George Gilder at an event organised by Northern Telecom called it the "Negroponte Switch", and that name stuck.