I had a thought kicking around in my head, and it was amplified by nicolas’ presentation at Design Engaged.
The future is terribly easy to predict. It’s predicting the instantiation that’s hard.
Human needs change very slowly. Sometimes they suddenly become possible to fulfill, but more normally, they just get better, easier, cheaper. Future visions are always filled with the instantiations, even not mentioning the fulfilled need.
I disagree with Nicolas that the videophone was a failure. Personal communication with pictures as well as sound is very human – and it’s happening all the time. It’s just that the instantiation that took off was laptops and PCs with webcams, and Skype, rather than a box plugged into the phone line, or indeed, webcams in mobile phones (I personally think that this will take off quite soon too).
I remember watching Tomorrow’s World in the 80s, and it was filled with exotic shopping trolleys, each equipped with a computer (hard to find early examples, as, well, it’s still happening – 1998, 2002, 2004, 2005 and, oh look, 2008, 2008). The need – shopping is boring and annoying – remains, and is true; the reality was online shopping, in all its forms. Service design, rather than technology design.
It’s true that the future is not evenly distributed. My present is about 3 years in the chronological future, both in my work and the way I’m using technology. I’ve generally noticed that big technologies, like the Internet, Bluetooth, wifi, DVDs take at least 6 years to become mass-market, from the first true consumer product. So my present can be 9 years ahead of even sophisticated, monied, privileged Western people. I’ve had several serious meetings about 2015, even 2017 at work. Big ideas take time…. self-parking cars: 17 years, digital radio: 8-9 years.
I’d also say that if you can’t predict rough instantiations 3 years out, you’re not paying enough attention. In 3 years, there’s unlikely to be revolution, but many weak signals are around. If it has physicality in any way, companies have to work this far out, and the research would have been done years before that. Pay attention!
If it has physicality in any way, companies have to work this far out, and the research would have been done years before that.
But there has to be a willingness to get it wrong, or to appreciate that you might just miss the mark, and have the iterations ready to roll.
That’s the tricky balance: the willingness to commit, because half-heartedness will be seen as such and intuitively passoed over — but not to overcommit in a way that has you playing Procrustes. Hello, MiniDisc.
I don’t think we’re in disagreement. There was actually one slide I removed before the talk in which I discussed the “what is a failure” issue. There is a broad range here: from “lack of adoption of a particular device” to “technological failure” (the thing simply never worked). What is simply missing in my discussion was this typology of failures: while the AT&T videophones were a failure, the idea of using images/video is definitely a success. So there is a distinction that I called “idea (use of pictures/video in phone communication) versus designed object (the AT&T phones). The latter corresponds to what you called “instantiation”. That slide should have helped.
Should still improve that talk by taking this different range of failure into account. Especially, as it allows to then discuss what elements of the “possible future” will remain and what instantiation might be better than others.
I like the general principle of this. The future is never as different as we all like to think. Life is moving quicker but more things stay the same, then change.
Have you thought about what causes the 6 years cycle from first consumer product to mass-adoption? Or, what slows down the “adoption of future” to, for instance, six years? Maybe the adoption requires change in human behaviour, maybe there are limits to the hardware adoption (manufacturing, worldwide distribution, etc), something else? Can the adoption be sped up?
— Niko Nyman 11.10.08 #
Niko: my guess is that it just takes a lot of time to get from “feasible” to “usable” for different reasons: ease of use, lack of supporting infrastructure, design, business…
Following Apple way too closely since 1992 it’s been interesting to see them move from products that are somewhat revolutionary but lacking (think Newton) to products that are clearly not state-of-the-art anymore but more usable in everyday life (think iPod). There are few cases where they still manage to bridge that gap faster than others, but even those cases have usually been more about evolution of an existing technology. Multitouch in iPhone comes to mind as a more recent example.
Looking at the original presentation, the interesting question is that can adopting a technology too early in the development path actually hinder its mass adoption? If people have bad experiences with a product they will spread the word and possibly poison the whole concept for years – if no permanently. Again, Newton and the infamous Simpsons reference about the handwriting recognition come to mind with the video phone as a close second.
Let’s not forget boneheaded decisions by parent companies as a primary factor in killing technology instantiations.
Look at camera phones and the 3G launch in Japan five years ago: Docomo made using the technology cost prohibitive. Video calls were reduced to nothing more than a novelty that you’d use once or twice when you got a 3G phone, but wouldn’t use for day to day communications because it was simply too expensive. The video call never became part of our lexicon of communication options. Whereas, give us an iPhone with a high quality screen-front camera, decouple from irrational pricing plans and watch as people start to video phone each other.
Sony’s MD launch in the US comes to mind as another great technology, well ahead of the curve, hampered by half-hearted parent company support and cost.
— tokyocraiger 12.10.08 #
contact
email:
chris is at anti-mega.com
Twitter:
@antimega
iChat/AIM:
antimega77