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Worst and Best Predictions on Technology
prostoalex writes "Dow Jones News asked several mahor scientists and technologists about their worst and best predictions of the future. The story, republished at Yahoo! Finance Singapore quotes Lester Thurow, Professor of management and economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management; Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab; Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture; Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell; Peter Cochrane, Director, ConceptLabs; Michael Earl, Dean, Templeton College, University of Oxford. There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users and vice versa."
I'm still disappointed and waiting for my nuclear powered vacuum cleaner.
People always overrate the future, its the one constant..
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I predict we need more machines that talk back to authors when they find mahor spelling mistakes.
Money for nothing, pix for free
...is those pesky users and their fickle minds. For instance, who would have thought that most people actually don't *want* video phones or flying cars or talking computers? Or at least, they don't want them enough to drive the technical development of these things, since standard phones, autos, and Windows seem to do the job well enough.
.Net web services demo! It will show you the current news and weather! OVER THE INTERNET! Oh, just install this 300MB library+runtime first. Ok, now install my 30MB client app. Oh, yeah, that didn't refresh properly, did it? Exit out and restart. Dang. [this is better than a browser how?]), and for most in-house developers it will be just another call to use instead of dlopen() to open shared routine. And until the Net becomes totally ubiquitous and telecom-reliable, I don't see many shrink-wrap developers linking in lots of remote Web Services on the fly, when most of that functionality can be placed locally during the install.
In other words, just because a technology looks like it's the "right" way to progress next, doesn't mean the market will allow it to move along.
I think we'll see this with Web Services (noted in the artcle as the current Next Big Thing). At it's core it's simply a formalization of how CGI developers have been working for years, yet most people and developers still prefer to use a generic web browser to diseminate most information, vs. using a custom client and a web service. Why? Because developers don't want to support another client program, and users don't want to download another one when they can just enter www.weather.com/my-zip-code to get the current weather forecast. I don't think it's been the lack of a formal parameter/return value standard that has held this idea back.
Don't get me wrong, I think Web Services are a nice tool, but unfortunately I see it as a problem looking for a solution. For most end-users it will mostly be a poor substitute for a URL (wait until your co-worker comes in to show you his spiffy new
What's he talking about? I talk to computers all the time, especially Windows machines. "What the hell do you mean the zip drive can't be found?! It's right there!"
Worst prediction: People would be talking to computers....Mr. Negroponte would welcome a breakthrough. "I've been wrong for a long time," he says. Isn't there a program called something like ViaVoice? Doesn't Office XP come with Voice Reconigtion? Doesn't Mac OS 9 (I believe) have voice passwords? Don't people use it? I don't think this is a worst prediction. Yes, the reconigtion program isn't that great, but it is getting better and better. Where has this guy been living (and what computer has he been using) to say that he is wrong?
O, and btw, don't we all talk to computers even if we don't have voice reconigtion? "Come on, you can do it", "Stupid Windows", "Good job", "You stupid dimwit" are just some examples. This would be concidered talking to a computer. In light of that, talking to computers is done everyday almost by every person.
Most futurists follow the same "30-year rule" that science fiction writers follow: If you want to predict a sweeping change that will revolutionize everything, place it about 30 years in the future. If you doubt this, just look at virtually every mainstream sci-fi flick that takes place in the future. This might have started with George Orwell's "1984", first published in 1954.
I think people tend to come up with 30 years because (a) it sounds far away enough for anything to happen, and (b) it's soon enough that they might be alive to see it.
[obPrediction: by 2032, Slashdot will have its own TV show]
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
No doubt. Seems like every 6 months some website trots out "the experts" and sets them loose on the next big thing.
Well, here's my prediction:
Computers won't change much in the next 10 years. Oh, they may change shape, or form, but they will still do the same thing:
connect us to people and information
Side note, yeah, we are supposed to have all these cool tech advances, and we can't even get cheap broadband access in urban areas. Please. Get the stuff we have currently working well, then we will worry about the flying cars
Sent from your iPad.
While the concept of any civilian being able to fly is an intriging one, it does pose certain problems.
Most drivers are of the opinion that 95% of other drivers should not be driving. At least that is the way it seems to myself when my friends who do drive choose to vent their spleens on the subject.
Do you really want that Drunken idiot who cut you off flying around? The hazards for office buildings and high rise apartments alone are staggering. I do not like the idea of having some 16 year old DUI parking his Hovercar in my apartment living room.
END COMMUNICATION
Make a subject where the users can enter their predictions about the future - then we return in ten years and check it out :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This sounds like a good time to sort out an old (possibly apocryphal) quote I heard, it was allegedly attributed to Issac Asimov. He said something to the effect that "any time an expert says something is absolutely impossible, it is certain to happen, eventually. Any time an expert says something is possible, it will happen sooner than anyone expected."
Now I'm sure I've mangled that, Asimov could spin a phrase much better than that. But it does sound like Asimov, an ironic skepticism against skeptics, disbelief in pundits, and a belief that we are most infallible when we claim things are impossible.
People always overrate the future, its the one constant..
"The future looked much better in the olden days." -- Grandfather
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture;
I predict that Mr. Ferguson might need to find a new job before too long.
You mean Arthur C Clarke's First Law - "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Do at least try to attribute the correct author!
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
When it comes to making predictions regarding technology, it is typically much safer to predict the possibility of something than the impossibility of it. Human ingenuity is truly amazing.
Perhaps that's what makes all these old predictions about talking, thinking computers so intriguing. Computers have advanced in so many ways as people have boldly predicted (perhaps the most astounding of which is that Moore's Law continues to hold true), yet AI has accomplished very little. And unfortunately, speech recognition and AI (which might be the same) are probably the most important for making computers truly useful for the ordinary end users that don't have to time to learn complex interfaces.
This sig is false.
Social Contract? I don't remember signing any Social Contract!
There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users
This is a strong point. Now I don't have to worry about getting yelled at by my girlfriend and my computer, which the two combined occupy 95% of my time.
"You moron! Windows XP is SO not my look!"
"The internet will collapse in 1996." -Bob Metcalf, Ethernet inventor and 3Com founder.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
... that some overzealous Microsoft basher is soon about to quote Bill Gates on the 640k limit, even tough it has been shown recently that he never uttered these words.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson Senior, Chairman of IBM, 1943
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Like Microsoft collapsing in 6 months back in 2000, and more recently, Windows becoming obsolete with the advent of the new $299 Linux boxes from WalMart.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I predict that in 10 years /. has been ranamed to ./ and focuses on local news on each continent.
I predict that in 10 years weblinks have become illegal because
a) they are almost invariably a copyright violation
b) they can be used to direct slashdot DDoS attacks
I predict that in 10 years we have moved on and slashdot is being read by another generation of pimple faced nerds.
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Clarke's 1st Law
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
Clarke's 2nd Law
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
Clarke's 3rd Law
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
I wish the article had presented a bit more background on these guys predictions than "Here's the worst, here's the best, here's the current". That really doesn't let me gauge whether these guys are making good predictions or not.
/.? For the past week I've had a timeout on about 1 in three connections to /., both from work and from home.
Consider Slashdot posts: You might say that my highest rated post is 5, my lowest -1, and my most recent is 3. But, does that give you any real feel for whether you want to read my posts? Now, if you said that my mean post value was 3.5, my mode was 4, and that only 10% of my posts are rated less than 2 (NOTE: all figures are made up - I don't keep that close track on my moderations) then you might be able to judge better.
Simillarly, when judging someone's ability to predict where things are going, I'd like to know what their ratio of hits to misses are. If somebody is right no more often than they are wrong, then I can weight their prediction accordingly.
That's one of the problems I had with Tomorrowland at Disney - it's nothing but a bunch of predictions from the past. I'd rather they have done a "Yesterday's Tomorrow" - for every decade show what people thought the future was going to look like, along with a reality check. Show the things they got wrong (flying cars), the things they got right (television), and the things they completely missed (computers).
OT: is anybody else having problems getting to
www.eFax.com are spammers
From Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell
"Like Mr. Negroponte, Mr. Nugent thought people would be conversing with their computers years ago. He also thought computers would be able to emulate human thought. He says IBM's champion chess-playing computer is evidence of the progress that has been made, but the field still falls short of early expectations."
IBM's chess-playing computer was just a massive parallel search assisted by human generated heuristics. It was not progress into emulating human thought. The only thing it progressed was building a computer to play chess.
If this guys is Novell's CTO, that explains Novell's problems.
I agree with you on some other things that could become interesting. IPV6 could allow IP addresses everywhere, which will probably be taken advantage of. It also supports packet prioritization, which would be very good for VoIP and related technologies.
Linux already runs on several non-i386 processors, and it is commonly used on these in, for example, embedded systems. Embedded systems, I think, are quite exciting. And Linux (or one of the *BSD's) will probably be the kernel of choice for those, since the idea of putting an OS on one of those is to allow the device to be programmed easily and not be noticed by the user. From that perspective, Linux is obviously superior to any harder-to-develop-for OS that you have to pay for, like Windows.
I'm still excited about the future. Are you?
I think Lester Thurow was wrong on Japan because their economic collapse showed that Japan's cultural norms could not accommodate the changes necessary to improve their economic systems.
Look at South Korea--after the horrid experience of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1999 this country was willing to take drastic steps to improve its economic system; as a result the country is doing quite well indeed.
Here in the USA, the fact we're more than willing to make changes in our economic system to correct problems show why the USA will do well economically.
Thurow is an economist, not a scientist or engineer, which is why his predictions about biotech are particularly bad. The science is on the edge of a lot of new understanding and breakthroughs, but that will only put us up against the really interesting and hard problems. As if we would be able to find genes that more or less directly influence something as subtle as IQ.
I find the predictions about the future importance of web services and the junk about "insight" to be particularly inane. On the first, nobody should forget that GM and Ford are still about the only companies that represent a percentage of the U.S. economy. Manufacture of physical goods (and commodities production, etc.) will continue to be the drivers of economies.
In my opinion, the most important trend is a favorite of this forum. The growth factors that have been working for Free software are fundamentally exponential, even if the constant factor is small. If it isn't killed off by legal/social influence of current big players, and I don't think this is likely if it is even possible, then the exponential term will eventually dominate.
When this plays out, the companies that make their reputations by being the best at efficiently building and servicing products that are mostly designed in the "Creative Commons". People will pay for quality in goods and services, and there will always be value in good execution. Customers do not value "insight" as described in one prediction. They find this sort of thing invasive and manipulative, and you won't be able to keep it secret.
It was when I was chasing down some secondary links from the GNUradio interview that I came across the stuff about the value of a network increasing at greater than linear rates. You get O(N) for broadcast networks, O(N^2) in peer to peer networks, but the exponential (O(2^N)) comes in when you have group forming networks (GFN).
When you think about it, this is what drives the GPL software phenominon. Every project fork or new initiative forms a new group or groups in the network, and every project is a nucleus for new group formation. The only way this could be stopped is to destroy to possibility of the group forming that leads to the exponential growth. While this might be possible, our robust institutions that support free speech make this very difficult if not impossible.
So my prediction is that Linux on the desktop will overtake Windows in the next ten years, and the RIAa and MPAA will finally lose out to the best interests of the actual artists they claim to support. Also, derivitives of GNUradio will be core technology in establishing cooperative wireless mesh networks. This is the only prediction of any of the pundits in the article that will come true.
First off: you don't use your computer for anything intensive, do you? I use it for 3d modeling and animation, and boy-oh-boy do I need the extra cpu-power, the extra ram, that superduper new gfx card. At least, if I want to move the objects at anything but frame-by-frame on my monitor.
As for the HD...yeah, I photoshop my own textures. You bet that I need that HD-space for something else than divx'.
And all this certainly comes in handy when I have to do some finite-element analysis for school (or any other simulation for that matter).
Added bonus: I can play computer games with realistic graphics on it, too!
Now, secondly; there is more to life than the computer itself. Read the very last line of the article...damn if that's not true, and maybe the most important piece of the whole chebang (sp?). Also, the bottom-up telephone system...that got me thinking bigtime. I like that idea.
Oh, and just to prove I can't count, here's number three; you want new stuff? There's whole area's of the universe not understood yet, where breakthroughs are coming (just you wait). Just a couple are: the nature of time (we still have no clue!), human nature in mind and body (what is the mind?, the soul? and what about huge breakthroughs in understanding becoming possible by biochips?). There's loads more, all only coming within reach because technology is making it possible for us to simulate/look at/describe these systems and phenomena.
Trust me, we don't know nothing yet.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Though not young, I do have an expensive monitor (dual 21", both @ 1600x1200.) Still, I have the same problem you do. Fonts are often too small to be legible. Mozilla lets you easly adjust the font size, even for the sites you mention. It's a life saver (or eyeball saver at least) for me.
Peter Cochrane
Director, ConceptLabs; former chief technologist, British Telecommunications PLC
Worst prediction: Voice over Internet protocol technology would fall flat.
Mr. Cochrane says 10 years ago he was extremely skeptical of the voice over Internet protocol systems that let people make voice telephone calls over data networks. He thought the networks couldn't handle it. Now he concedes that it's been successful at least on single data networks, like those used within a company.
Shouldn't he be working on a warp drive instead of making these stupid predictions?!?
Live web cams
Actually, I read an article serveral years ago which confirmed my preference for a dimly lit (but not dark) office. The article claimed that significant eye strain is created due to glare on monitors from the ambient light in bright offices. I asked my optometrist he agreed with the opinions in the article.
I've always found it more comforable to work with dim lighting, and thankfully most people at my company agree. We have desk lamps for when you're not looking at your monitor or for people that insist on having bright light. Works out better for everyone, and let's face it, with the decor of most modern offices, the less you see of it the better.
in 1943, there probably was a market for about five computers.
:)
But then people saw these things, came up with new ideas for them, and the market grew.
In the next 30 years:
Personal transportation will be more efficent and quite possibly cheaper
Processors will become much much faster they are are today. It is likely that processor powered devices may become smaller.
There will be people in the general public interested in space travel.
Most of the world will use the Internet. Some may even use it for pornography.
Now where are my bags of money?
The Internet is generally stupid
Maybe some of the editors should write their submissions in MS Word or one of its equivalents before posting it to the masses.
And then it would be ?major?
Just over a century ago he said:
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!">So it's not style sheets you have a problem with then, it's idiot web designers.
True, but the sigs can only be very short. Writing something like "Use stylesheets correctly" would hardly work since everybody thinks they are doing it right.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Well, "don't use stylesheets" doesn't make sense. If you're not going to change it, you shouldn't use it at all.
Stylesheets are part of the latest HTML spec, and when used properly reduce bandwidth usage and aid in usability. To not use stylesheets is to create depreciated code.
Even a 486 will run a browser that supports stylesheets. You'll just have to let go of the romantic notion that it's still 1996... it's called progress.
Even a 486 will run a browser that supports stylesheets. You'll just have to let go of the romantic notion that it's still 1996... it's called progress.
Yet another self-centeret edu kid, with an IQ of a dead rat and perfect vision no doubt. Its not called progress, its called regression - now hundreds, if not thousands of websites are unreadable to me and millions of others, because people use stylesheets badly.
Jakob Nielsen, who CNN called "Web usability guru" puts it this way:
Because most webdesigners use absolute font size, which means you can't resize it in browsers. Ie, you are stuck with a font size which is often too small (it is for me most of the time).
Jakob Nielsen (who you should know if you are a regular slashdot reader, if not search the slashdot archives), the man CNN calls "Web usability guru" (ironically they do it wrong as well), will tell you why Stylesheets "reduced readability of an increasing number of websites" - He will also tell you how to do it right. - Basically doing it right is to specify percentage weights so that the stylesheets DO cascade, instead of taking over.
Some sites who do it wrong:
http://www.cnn.com
http://www.microsoft.com
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http://www.asus.com.tw/
htt
http://www.syfyportal.com/
Why wrong? Because you can't adjust the font size in MSIE (its possible you use a minority browser which allows you to do this, but 99% of webusers can not adjust the size)
So you can argue the tag shouldn't read "don't use stylesheets" but "use stylesheets properly" - but that wouldn't work, everone thinks that he is using them properly and only the others do it wrong. Its a soundbite - and its not entirely wrong, almost all of the unreadable websites are unreadable because the "webmaster" was using stylesheets.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't know why I'm compelled to respond to this troll... I am well aware of Jakob Nielson. Why don't you just write "Don't use HTML because it's too hard to read webpages when I telnet into port 80"
You completely ignore the fact that stylesheets, when used properly, reduce bandwidth usage and increase usability.
If you've got cataracts are are so vastly intelligent, why don't you download a browser that will let you increase your font size instead of making generalizations and broad statements which are so easily proven wrong. I also doubt that there are "millions" of people that are so dramatically affected.
I don't know why I'm compelled to respond to this troll
I'm nearsighted you jerk, not a troll.
I am well aware of Jakob Nielson
It's Nielsen.
Why don't you just write "Don't use HTML because it's too hard to read webpages when I telnet into port 80"
Because thats stupid bullshit, the other is a valid point.
You completely ignore the fact that stylesheets, when used properly, reduce bandwidth usage and increase usability.
No, I don't believe that I do. I agree about the reduced bandwith (even when used improperly) - I'm not sure what you mean about "usability" -however very few seem to use them properly.
If you've got cataracts are are so vastly intelligent,
I've never claimed that I was "vastly intelligent", just intimated that you and those of your ilk apparently are not very.
why don't you download a browser that will let you increase your font size instead of making generalizations and broad statements which are so easily proven wrong.
The statement is that a growing number of websites are abusing stylesheets by using fixed fontsizes making it hard to read for many people. This is fact. There is nothing to disprove there(nor have you). You can say "I don't care" or "just use 3-5 different browsers, you'll find one for all pages!" - you may have perfect vision today - you won't forever(statistically).
I also doubt that there are "millions" of people that are so dramatically affected.
Well, the number was a guess - but according to the American Optometric Association 30% of Americans are myopic - you do the math.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating