The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It

When Xerox CEO C. Peter McColough established the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1970, Xerox executives were, naturally, curious to know what their corporate think tank would tell them about the future of technology and business. When Alan Kay, a team leader at PARC, was asked for the umpteenth time to opine on what the future would hold for Xerox, he snapped there was no easy way to know. “The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” he said.

That line became a mantra for Alan and for PARC, which did unbelievable amounts to invent the future by laying the foundation of today’s computing experience.?

When PARC began its work, what most people thought of as a computer weighed more than a ton, needed to be cooled with water in a heavily air-conditioned room, took about 15 minutes to boot up, and was surrounded by a sort of priesthood of lab technicians to cater to the needs of the machine. Data was entered with punch cards, and results were produced on clackety printers as words and numbers—there was maybe the occasional graph, but certainly no images, and the idea of video on a computer was positively silly. The Internet existed, but barely—while many billions of devices are connected these days, only four computers were tied together in the early days. Not four billion. Not four million. Not four thousand or even four hundred. Four.?

But Alan had developed a series of very different ideas as a graduate student in the 1960s, and they would lead to what he eventually called Dynabook—a battery-powered laptop with wireless access to a network that let you communicate with anyone and have access to all the world’s information. In a world full of mainframes, Alan imagined computers more like the ones pictured the following illustration (Source: Alan Kay).

So, in response to repeated queries on what was coming, Alan didn’t say something on the order of “I forecast there will be this much computing power, and here’s what I predict others will do with it." Instead, Alan and his colleagues at PARC thought much bigger than Xerox's immediate concerns.

Instead of "problem solving" the issues of the day, they went "problem finding," as Alan has described it to me. They considered what new kinds of problems could be addressed by the exponentially advancing capabilities that would inevitably enable tools like the Dynabook. And, in doing so, they envisioned a radically different future with new computing tools that could provide a new kind of literacy and new ways for children to discuss, play with, and learn powerful ideas. Then, they invented all the pieces needed for that future.?

Over five glorious years in the early 1970s, PARC researchers—building on work of the larger ARPA community—invented many of the core elements of a learning environment to support their vision, including the first personal computer, the overlapping windows and graphical user interface, dynamic object-oriented programming, desktop publishing, the laser printer, peer-to-peer and client-server computing, and Ethernet, which enabled corporate networks of personal computers. And, while PARC researchers didn’t invent the Internet, they made such significant advancements that PARC deserves considerable credit for it.

While Xerox’s failure to capture much of the economic fruits of PARC’s inventions is legendary, there’s no doubt that Xerox generated hundreds of billions in revenue and many 1000x returns on its entire PARC investment from just the development of laser printing technology.

A half-century later, most of the information-technology industry and much of global culture and commerce still depends on PARC’s inventions. Technology companies and many others in downstream industries (including yours, I wager) have collectively realized trillions of dollars in revenue and tens of trillions in market value because of PARC’s work.?

Alan didn't stop there. Both directly through his continuing research and at numerous companies he advised, such as at Apple, Disney, Pixar, HP, Andersen Consulting, CSC, Diamond, PwC and Vanguard, Alan helped to invent the future again and again. I will leave the telling of some of those stories for future posts.

Alan’s observation also became a mantra for me, as I worked with him for decades in my work as a futurist and innovation advisor, and it drives the narrative of much of my writings, including this newsletter and my recent book, coauthored with Paul B. Carroll and Tim Andrews, “A Brief History of a Perfect Future” (from which this article is drawn).

I invite you to follow along as I continue to explore Alan's work and apply his mantra to the opportunity of collectively inventing a future we can proudly leave to our kids.

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Watch a preview of "A Brief History of a Perfect Future: Inventing the World We Can Proudly Leave Our Kids by 2050".