Neil Johnson wrote: > However, for you new subscribers, I'd like to point out Tim's record for > predicting the coming revolution.
> April 1995 > Tim predicts the coming revolution as a result of the bombing of the Murrah > Federal building in Oklahoma City. > December 1999 > Tim predicts the coming revolution due to the "Y2K bug". Being a futurist is a unrewarding profession. Bright futurists don't predict the future. They look at what's possible, what's probable, and what's desirable. You have to realize that predicting the future is really about predicting human behavior. In the 1950's, futurists engaged in endless speculation about what we would do with all our leisure time in the 1990's. In reality, life today is even more of a competition between citizen-units to see who will take the least amount of money to work themselves into an early grave. I really have given up on predicting. Things happen if they are possible, and if people do them. If people don't do them, they don't happen. Far be it from me to decide what people will do, or what technology people will invent. I can predict what I will do. I can't predict what anyone else will do. Back when I harbored the delusion that I could predict things, I predicted quite a bit. I predicted that PL/I and APL would obsolete the need for all other computer languages. I looked at a development version of VisiCalc running on an Apple II, and said - "I hope you guys didn't spend a lot of time on this" - and predicted no one would buy "a computer simulation of a ledger sheet." I predicted that someday, all computers would be Lisp Machines. I predicted Ethernet would be a failure, because collision detection seemed a really unclean way of arbitrating a communications medium. I predicted Sparc would not become a dominant architecture. I predicted the 5th Generation project under Admiral Bobby Inman would in fact produce a machine as smart as a man. I predicted we'd have cities on the moon and Mars by now. I predicted Networking would never beat the bandwidth of a 9-track tape in a Fedex pouch. I predicted only Geeks would have their own computers. Well, you get the idea. As I cruise into crotchety middle-aged engineering, mathematical, and metaphysical wizardhood, I can only say I have been completely cured of the urge to predict anything. "Predicting the future is like teaching a pig to sing. You'll never do it, it's a frustrating experience, and it's not much fun for the pig either." Advice Tim and other prognosticators should take to heart. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"
