Will Cell Phones Catch On?

One of my favorite stories about predicting future trends comes from an MBA class in Telecom that I was teaching in the early 1990’s. I was doing the exercise that I described in the previous post and said “One of the things you will tell your grand kids is that back in 1993, if you were expecting a phone call, you had to be by the phone to get it.” Of course, back in 1993 cell phones were still a curiosity, very big and very expensive. I went on to say, “In the future, you will carry your phone around with you and the network will find you.”

Well this was just too much for these practically minded MBA students. They put down their pen, folded their arms across there chests, and refused to even take notes on an idea as preposterous as this. After a few minutes of looks, ranging from curious to disdainful, the challenges began.

First, the practical concerns,

“Phones are way to big to carry around”

“And the portable ones are far too expensive for everyone to have one”

Then the some deeper issues,

“When I am away from the phone, I want to be away from it.”

“Yes, I don’t want to be accessible 24/7”

“What about privacy? Isn’t ‘having the network find you’ a violation of personal privacy?”

And, finally, the real issue,

“I just don’t see this happening,”

Of course, since we know how this turned out, we find this resistance amusing. Today, many people would go into shock if they had to give up their cell phone for a day. But, what I really like about this story is that is provides us with several teaching points.

First, no matter how much change people have seen in their past, they don’t think things will change in their future. Science fiction ideas like flying cars don’t bother people because they don’t really think they will happen in any time frame that will concern them. But when you talk about changes that will affect their daily life in profound ways, they just resist the ideas.

Second, this resistance always takes the form of talking points. On any given technology there seems to be a standard set of talking points that people use to comfort themselves. It isn’t about the probability of the technology being developed or catching on. It is about preserving one’s comfort with the known.

Thirds, one of the biggest mistakes people make when considering the value of a future technology is that they evaluate the technology in the context of the present rather than in the context of the future that the technology helps to create. Had these students known about texting, cool apps, Siri, taking photos or customized ringtones they may have felt differently about the prospective technology.

The pattern here is that you cannot rely on the opinions of people in the present to help you assess if a new technology will catch on.

Getting Perspective

It is very difficult for people to imagine the future. There is something, very stable in our minds, about the present and the status quo. No matter how much change we have seen in the past, we do not see that much change in our future. For example, I am pretty sure that at some point in the future web interfaces will be both intelligent and three dimensional. But it is very difficult to convince anyone of either. We can imagine robots and flying cars as long as they stay in our imaginations. When we think about our lives being different, we reject the notions.

One of the techniques I use to overcome this cognitive resistance is to ask people to imagine that it is fifty years into the future. In this scenario, they are sitting with their grandchildren on their lap explaining what life was like back in the year which is current when I am doing this exercise. The kids ask “what was life like back in …. “ At which point they say to the grandkids “You won’t believe this but back in …… we used to ….” And they fill in the blank with something that is a mainstay of the current day but will probably be gone and forgotten fifty years hence.

Here is an example. Fifty years from now people will tell their grandchildren that back in 2013 people would get up every morning and sit in traffic for an hour or more driving to the building in which they work. In the future with advances in both telecommunications and virtual worlds, the idea of everybody having to be in the same physical building will become impractical and arcane. People will go to work by logging into their home computer. What that home computer may look like is another thing entirely. But, I use this example as a starting point for a whole host of other changes.

This exercise is useful because we are more used to looking back at the past and seeing how things in the present are different than we are of looking into the future and seeing how things will be different. I will come back to this technique from time to time to illustrate other principles.

Does History Repeat Itself?

The question of whether or not history repeats itself is often asked in drawling contemplative tones as though it were a weighty philosophical question. Actually, it is a silly question. Clearly history does not repeat itself otherwise we would have multiple Golden Ages of Greece, multiple Roman Empires, and pyramids all over the place. Travel in China would be impossible because of Great Walls across the landscape blocking roads. It’s bad enough today when tenth graders have to read Plato’s Republic. If they had to compare volumes of The Republic from different instances of the Golden Age of Greece, nobody would ever finish high school. Unemployment would go up. Economies would crash. Surely it would be the end of civilization as we know it. OK, maybe I got a little carried away. But, it merely goes to support that notion that the idea of history repeating itself is prima facie ridiculous. Prima facie is Latin for “on the face of it” or “at first glance”. Using Latin phrases helps shore up your credibility and balances any predictions you may have made about the end of civilization.

But the more serious question is – do the patterns of history repeat themselves. There answer here is a qualified yes and there is abundant evidence to support this claim. There are cycles of feast and famine. There are economic cycles. Empires rise and fall. There are times of expansion, either economic or geographic, and times of contraction. Despots rise and fall. Some get their due and some don’t. There are repetitive patterns to history because we look at history and organize it, to the extent possible, into repetitive patterns. And the patterns continue to repeat, if imperfectly. And therein lays the rub.

Patterns do repeat and can be used to predict future events. And the veracity of those predictions depends on how well the patterns fit and how well we recognize their imperfection.  The patterns of history are the key to predicting the future. But, figuring out how to identify and apply them correctly is the challenge.My approach to predicting the future which is limited to the emergence of technology and key ideas is based on recognizing patterns. As this blog unfolds, I will attempt to explain how that works.

Patterns

If I was alive 3000 years ago, I probably would have been a prophet. This is not to suggest that I have any special connection with the divine. It is merely to say that I am unusually good at recognizing patterns. This just happens to be something I am good at by virtue of having a natural capacity which I have developed and refined over the years. And it isn't flagrant immodesty, to say this, as there are lots of things that I am not good at.

We all have special talents where, for what ever reason, we do something better than most other people. Other people can remember names, make small talk at a social gathering, do mental math, spell correctly or say things in a way that doesn't ruffle feathers. These talents were not bestowed on me.  But, the ability to recognize patterns was bestowed on me. And it can be very useful. It can help you organize your thinking, find the essence of things, speculate on causes, and predict the future these are all things that I do all the time.

I don't mean to imply that I am always right. I am not. I have made some colossal mistakes. For example, I did not think the personal computer would catch on. But mistakes are a part of the process.  You recognize a pattern; attempt to verify it over time; and weather you got it right or wrong try to figure out why.

Being a professor, I do this all the time. And students who have enjoyed my predictions about the future, or the way I organize ideas in the present, often ask if there is some way they can keep hearing about this after they leave school. Until now, I really haven't made any effort in this direction. But, having gotten bitten by the writing bug again, just recently, I thought I would give it a shot. And that is what this blog is going to be about.