From: hal@finney.org
Date: Mon Jul 12 1999 - 13:21:34 MDT
Mark writes:
> This brings to mind one of Clarke's laws, where he said something along the
> lines of 'everyone overestimates the short-term improvements in technology
> and under-estimates the long-term'. That seems to be generally true, in my
> experience.
It seems to me that people tend to overestimate the short-term
(meaning 5-10 years) improvements in the currently-hot technologies,
while longer-term (20-30 years), improvements often sneak up on them in
other areas that they aren't thinking about.
Back in the 60s, what was hot? Plastics? Space exploration? Big
mainframes?
In the early 80s, what was hot? Biotech? AI and expert systems?
Consumer Reports published a book in 1983 or so that described home
computers as a failed technology.
In 1990, what was hot? Virtual reality? Compuserve and Prodigy?
I expect that many things which look promising today will be complete
duds five years from now, and in 20 years the big news will be coming
from something we haven't even considered today.
Hal
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