The future ain’t what it used to be.
“We tend to overestimate the effects of new technology in the short run, but underestimate it in the long run”
Wise words from Roy Amara, a Stanford computer scientist and Head of the Institute of the Future.
A thought provoking post from Nikolas Badminton got me thinking on this.
I have personally fallen foul of Amara’s Law in my career. At one time, I was responsible for developing a product innovation for the telecoms sector, in the heat of global deregulation. I assumed that, given the deregulation horizon was just a few years, this product would explode like a supernova and become a side note after a few years.
The reality was very different. There was definitely a period of high expectations, but my prediction of the “half life” of the innovation was way off the mark. Over a decade later, the demand was still growing at pace.
A great many foolish things have been said about the future.
It turns out it takes many years for a new idea to seep into the culture.
“Technology does not drive change. It is our collective response to the options and opportunities presented by technology that drives change.”
As humans, we expect progress to be linear. It never is . . . .
This is another great example of the cognitive biases that influence our perspectives and decision making.
Tom Goodwin made a great observation on this in the discussion.
“I’m always a fan of things that change the world but are boring and nobody thinks about, like barbed wire, the barcode, or the shipping container. Quite a lot of stuff these days seems the opposite, exciting but remarkably superficial in impact.”.
Thanks for reading . . . .