Back to the future: Why technological forecast failed?

(Versión en Espa?ol aquí)

Disclaimer: This article was first published in November 2015 (in Spanish). It is translated to English in 2017 for academic purposes because will be used in a lecture at USIL this semester.

A few days ago, we were flooded with news, posts and memes on Internet that reminded us that the movie “Back to the Future – Part II” within its plot had defined the date October 21, 2015, as one in which its lead protagonist, Marty McFly and his friend the "Doc" Brown, would come from the future to save his family from the mess he knew they will be involved in.

Those most critical took time to analyze which future predictions, especially in technology, had not been fulfilled yet. For example, we do not have flying skateboards, cars that are fueled with recycled waste, self-adjusting sneakers or dehydrated pizzas; but on the other hand, some of the technologies shown in the movie remind us current applications such as video calls, augmented reality glasses and wireless devices like tablets or points of sale (POS).

Without doubt, imagine the future, despite the possibility of failure, attracts and seduces. Personally, from a young age I was a follower of authors such as Alvin Toffler and Isaac Asimov, each of them in a different area, but great futurists that stimulated my thinking. In addition, TV series like Star Trek or movies like Star Wars, helped in the task of letting the imagination fly.

But coming back to the technological forecasting, the problem is that it is not a simple task, and here a couple of well-known examples (or #bigfail as we would say now):

• “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home”. Ken Olson, Digital Equipment Corp. founder, 1977.
• “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” Robert Metcalfe 3Com founder, 1995.

One may wonder, why IT industry referrals failed in their predictions about technologies that we know today are massive. What is left to us mere mortals?

In fact, we cannot be so incisive with those who tried to forecast the future of society and technology. While in retrospective the "future" where we are now has been a single continuity of events from that "past" we want to evaluate, seen from the other shore -from that past- current future is just one of thousands of potential courses of action, each of them with different probability of realization.

Wendell Bell, Professor Emeritus at Yale University, and one of the referents in studies on the future, reminds us in his book “Foundations of Futures Studies”, that the future is not singular but plural, that is to say, there are no one but several "futures". The author groups them into three categories:

• Preferable futures. Refer to what is most desirable to happen based on value judgments. They tend to be emotional rather than cognitive. The roles to contribute to the creation of these types of future are charismatic leaders, social reformers, futurist writers.
• Probable futures. What is most likely to happen from extending current trends in one continuous (or discontinuous) line. The roles that contribute in this case are the analysts and methodologists.
• Possible futures. Something good or bad, likely or unlikely that could happen in the future. It may involve knowledge that we do not yet have. Here the contribution of visionaries and geniuses that boost creativity and openness is necessary.

In addition, Bell considers that there are wildcards, events of low probability but very high impact, that if presented will significantly alter any prediction.

Another way to look at the future will be based on the period of time that we want to study. Again, in this dimension the future it is not single and monolithic, but represents periods in which we can focus individually. Earl C. Joseph, American futurist establishes the following ranges:

• Near future: Up to one year from now.
• Short-term future: One to five years from now (usually used by businesses and governments).
• Mid-range future: Five to twenty years from now.
• Long-range future: Twenty to fifty years from now.
• Far future: Fifty years or more from now.

From the type of future and period for which we want to make forecasts, there are different techniques which apply best in each case. Some are based on the interaction of people, others seek to awaken the creativity of participants, there are also those that use the previous expertise of the participants in any subject, and finally the analytics techniques that are based on data, indicators and models. Some examples are the Delphi methods, scenario analysis, trend analysis, environmental monitoring, tree of relevance among many others.

Not wanting to fall behind, I share my own forecast for the range of short and medium term, and I hope to read me in few years and see that I am better aligned than the movie "Back to the Future":

• Intelligent assistance from applications in all our daily processes, like eating, buying, managing our finances, etc. This assistance will be further strengthened by the analytics of all the Big Data we leave every minute in the Internet, that will be used to refine these customer care models.
• Monitoring and control of our environments, home, cars, offices, furniture, clothes and “wearables” using sensors, with robotic devices and applications that will make decisions for us, looking for efficiency, economy, managing risk for us in such environments, in summary, intelligence at all levels ("Smart everything").
• The monitoring of our health and bodies. Although this may fall into the above category, I think it deserves an independent one because, in addition to the continuous monitoring of our vital functions, there will be remedial or curative capacity through technology either in the form of specific micro-medicine like when we send a ballistic missile, the reconstruction of organs and tissues, among other techniques, or simply the preventive maintenance of our bodies.
• Changes in the way we access and use physical and logical resources, as well as ownership or possession of assets in a cooperative way. Given that control mechanisms will allow to identify, monitor and limit the use of different assets, it will be easier to collectively access property that will then be properly shared between those who contributed for it. Somehow business models like Uber (for transportation), Airbnb (for hosting) or payment mechanisms like Bitcoins with which I can pay a 1000th dollar, are just a glimpse of what could be a larger model.
• Thanks to the ability of a more flat interaction among people, due to social networking and other applications on the internet, we will see a progressive disintermediation of consolidated institutions like political parties, universities, banking and even traditional productive enterprises. 3D printers and other MIT Fab Lab-like facilities can push the “do it yourself” or “do it among yourselves”, at the expense of large corporations.
• I cannot say much about a field that it is not mine, but also new industrial materials will allow to create lighter devices, more resistant, more efficient, for disruptive uses that the current materials do not allow. The bad news however for countries whose economy rely heavily on commodities is that these artificially manufactured materials in laboratories will progressively subtract the value of their main exports.
• In the same direction, as previous point, because of its lower cost and efficiency, we will see an increase of genetically corrected or created foods, despite the current opposition of some groups of society to the transgenic.

Finally, and if you want to receive a dose of futurology and let the imagination fly on technology and society, I recommend the British series Black Mirror, I am sure you will not be disappointed.

Xavier Gutierrez

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Previously published posts:

To bot or not to bot: that is the question (chatbots and cognitive computing)

From atoms and bits: 3D printers, digital fabrication and teleportation

The new Knights Templar: Will Blockchain be the general ledger of globalization?