Why Are Technology Predictions Often Wrong?
We love to hype new technologies with great predictions. So why are they often wrong? It has nothing to do with economics.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates once said that a computer wouldn’t need more than 64Mb of RAM for a computer. IBM engineers imagined in the 1940’s that someday, computers would weigh as “little” as 1.5 tons. The year mobile devices would take over the internet was predicted for about a decade. Never happened and won’t. Why are almost all of these predictions wrong?
My theory is that it comes down to two primary factors; culture and imagination. Both are unpredictable variables in a time when we are enchanted by data and all the tools to analyse the vast flows of data.
If everything we humans do can be rendered down into algorithms and our behaviours and actions packaged up like ready to eat meals, then that is culture on a diet and a loss of hope for the human imagination.
Fortunately, humanity and our cultures, cannot be so reduced and our imaginations remain very intact. We may in fact, be entering a time of unleashing human imagination in quite fascinating and unexpected ways. And as we are also in a time of hyper speed cultural transmission, predicting most anything about a technology will become even harder. And that’s a bit exciting.
Throughout history, each culture has seen technologies in different ways. We all tend to apply some degree of bias in our predictions and in how we will use technologies. This is the lens through which we view the world and our personal and communal place, in it.
So when a Silicon Valley tech leader makes predictions and statements about where a technology is going to go and how humans will use it, they tend to think this way with cultural bias. It’s not so much that they’re wrong, it’s that they will not see their cultural bias which is informing their prediction. Every culture does this.
It is extremely hard for a tech leader in Silicon Valley to predict how people in India or Japan might adopt a technology. And vice versa. So it’s not really about being right or wrong, it’s about cultural bias.
Developers of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developed Western cultures via AI through an individualistic lens within the economic framework of capitalism. In Japan and India however, AI is viewed through the lens of community first, economics second. It is much the same with other technologies too, not just AI.
The other thing that often happens with most technologies is that once they enter a culture other than the one in which it was invented, the new culture is likely to make some alterations to adapt it to their cultural preferences. This is how technologies evolve within cultures.
Many new technologies have come along in the past that were predicted and forecast to create entire new market segments. But they either didn’t, or in ways that weren’t predicted.
Google Glass for example, was much hyped and it does interesting things. It was resoundingly rejected by culture. Yet ended up finding a niche market in industrial, medical and military sectors. Apple’s Newton was similarly rejected, mostly by business culture. Only much later would some of its features be found in today’s smartphones.
The much hyped and lauded Segway personal transport device was supposed to change entire urban transportation systems. It didn’t. Mostly they’re found today in cities for tourists to get around easier alongside bicycles.
All technologies come from human imagination. They all emerge from within the cultural context of their creation and are solving for a problem within a cultural context. Sometimes, a technology will cross multiple cultures with little to know cultural adaptation, such as a hammer or screwdriver.
Even within a culture, there are often subcultures who will create their own adaptations and versions of a technology. Such as biohackers who rework sensors and computers to be put in their bodies. This radically changed the concept of computing for a certain cultural segment. Anthropologist Dr. Gabriella Coleman has done some very interesting research in this area.
Anthropologists Dawn Nafus and Genevieve Bell have done groundbreaking work that details how different cultures adapt and modify technologies to their particular sociocultural needs. Mostly based on value systems.
So when next you read about this or that technology is about to change everything and it’s going to be a wild ride for the next few years, or an industry will never be the same, step back for a second. Look at what culture you live in or grew up in and how it might view technology.
Yes, revolutionary technologies do tend to change much about our world. From language and writing to AI and modern aeroplanes. But rarely does that happen fast. When a new technology comes along that can change things quickly, it will often find a bumpier than expected road due to culture.
The more adaptable to change and open-minded a culture is, the faster the likely change. And technologies get even more interesting when they’re adapted and combined in ways the creator of a technology rarely imagines.
The invention of trains was to transport coal faster and more efficiently. The inventor never imagined transporting people. Bell invented the telephone to share opera music and never thought teenagers would want to hog the phone all night to chat with their friends. Or that massive switches and operators would be needed.
We co-evolve with technologies and as always, the ultimate arbiter of any technology is culture. Making forecasts and predictions is needed and helpful, but humans are unpredictable as much as they are predictable and culture is the collective means of human evolution, even impacting our biological evolution.