From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sun Aug 20 2000 - 12:05:35 MDT
> > Amara Graps wrote: > > ... quotation is called "Amara's Law":
> > >
> > > "In reacting to change, there is a tendency to overestimate the
> > > impact of change in the short run and underestimate its long
> > >term impact."
>
> altamira wrote: Here's a clue to this mystery:
>
> Excerpt from http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19990928S0001
>
> ... I'm reminded of Amara's
> law, postulated by Roy Amara, a colleague who was president of The Institute
> for the Future: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the
> short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."
I have been scouring thru my collection of Arthur C. Clarke works. I
*think* the quotation is from "Profiles of the Future", a remarkable
volume Clarke wrote between 1958 and 1961. I cannot locate the
exact quote, but all extropians who have not reviewed this profound
book of technoprophecy should drop whatever they are doing and read it.
Clarke saw further and more clearly into the future than any of his
contemporaries, anticipating many of the topics we talk about here,
including transparent society notions, advanced manufacturing and
the resulting prosperity, nanotechnology (well, kinda sorta, chapter
15 the Road to Lilliput), and even human immortality. Broderick's
The Spike is like a Y2K version of Clarke's Profiles. Do read both.
Spike C. Clarke's law: Any sufficiently Arthur C. Clarke-like
person is indistinguishable from god. {8^D spike
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