Impossible Dreams

 

CS875: Futuring and Innovation

James Thomas Vandiveer

Unit 3 Discussion 2

Instructor: Dr. Cynthia Calongne

April 30, 2021

 

 

This assignment is after DB1 where we discussed the differences between forecasting and scenario planning, so that information will be heavy on my mind during this discussion.  Forecasting and predictions in business context can depend on the goals of the exercise, the future time frame, and the and the perceived probability of risk.

Past thinkers and futurists have studied the future, what is now the present, and made predictions based on the velocity of the changes they perceived in their time.  Many of the predictions made were pure fiction with no basis, for example, Jules Verne and his concept of the hollow earth.  Other predictions were much, much closer to the mark.  For example, in 1953, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel of the future where the symbiosis between man and machine was explored in a series of vignettes.  In this novel, Bradbury explored the growing connectivity to technology and the social isolation of the human being among the sea of information.  More specifically, he predicted the invention of earbuds and Bluetooth headsets which look like seashells and produce a near-constant stream of technobabble to include news, entertainment, music…whatever is desired.  More than 70 years later, earbuds have reached the masses, and reality mirrors science fiction. 

  

Two of the forces that have impacted this technological success have been technological and sociological.  Many of the supporting technologies had to be developed to allow for the creation of this device.  The Internet had to be invented and bandwidth to the endpoint had to be sufficient for music, data, and video.  Further, cellular phones had to be improved to transmit/receive this constant data stream, but Bluetooth had to be invented so the devices could talk.  Earphone technology had to become more miniaturized so that all the components could fit within the user’s ear.  Lastly, the software had to be written to tie all these disparate technologies together, not to mention the software ecosystem on the internet to generate the quantity of programming to ensure widespread demand and adoption by society.  It is interesting in retrospect that porn was the main driver of widespread video streaming on the internet and for personal devices, for without this base human vice, it is highly likely that the realm of the internet would have remained a University developed and hosted service a la BBS’s.  However, that is another fully researched and discussed topic entirely and is outside the scope of this paper.  If past performance holds true, our next breakthrough will be realistic full-sensory virtual reality, but widespread adoption will not occur until the masses can use it to augment and escape their reality.  Several books and movies come to mind, but Total Recall captures the concept perfectly.

 

References

Bradbury, R. (1967). Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster.

 

The Color Purple - A Victorian Innovation Story

 

    For this post, I wanted to write on something that I was not aware of as an accident.  Because so many of our modern inventions are spoken about incessantly, I had to go back a little further, to Victorian England and the emergence of modern chemistry and its effect on the world of fashion.

            William Henry Perkin was an 18-year-old college student enrolled at London’s Royal College of Chemistry in the year 1856.  During this period, exploration of Africa was exploding as the discovery of Quinine had allowed European colonizers to effectively treat malaria and it was no longer a fatal illness.  The Dutch had cornered the market on the primary ingredient of quinine, cinchona bark, and other imperial powers of the time were seeking other ways to create quinine without the use of this required ingredient.  (Quinine., 2021) Enter Mr. Perkin, young, eager to impress his teacher with an inquisitive mind, a willingness to experiment with his chemistry set at home and an impossible task: to find a cheap way to produce quinine without cinchona bark.

            One of Perkin’s experiments towards this end was to use coal tar, the substance that remains when Victorian gas lighting is used.  At the time, chemists believed coal tar and quinine were made up of the same chemicals or were of similar structures.  After experimenting with the coal tar, he was unsuccessful in transforming it into quinine, rather his alchemy has altered it into a thick black goo, a far cry from the clear property of quinine.    Likely disappointed, he went to clean up his experiment and found the residue was a brilliant purple color, it was easily transferred to cloth and the cloth retained the stain.  Mr. Perkin had figured out a way to create industrial dye in large quantities and with brilliant and colorful properties.  Mauve was born…right into the largest cultural fashion craze of the time as purple was the most desired, most expensive, and typically dull and quick to fade with the existing natural dyes.  Mauve made form Perkin’s process was cheap, brilliant and the first synthetic dye in history.  Now, a regular woman of the period could afford to wear the most fashionable styles as they suddenly became affordable to the masses. (CNN., 2017)

            Mr. Perkin’s discovery destroyed an industry that used natural materials to make dyes and in the process was able to bring about efficiencies in production and cost savings to build a business.  In fact, during a period where chemistry was looked upon as a scientific curiosity with no material value, he monetized it and built an industry out of producing synthetic dyes.  He could not have come upon this invention at a better time. Not only was purple the choice of color in the spring of 1856, he was also physically located in the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the manufacturing efficiencies of process gained from the same.  (CNN., 2017)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

Quinine. (2021, April 28). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine

The color purple: How an accidental discovery changed fashion forever. (2017, August 29). In CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/perkin-mauve-purple/index.html

About nothing - an intro to the futuring of global travel

Since my wife and I moved to the USA, we've noticed a lot of cultural differences, some better, some worse, most strange since it had been several years since I've lived in the USA.  You can never truly know a place until you live there, and the USA has become a difficult place to live in. 

In Europe, the housing costs are high but you are buying a concrete property that will last for hundreds of years.  In the USA, a new home for the same cost will fall down in 40 years. In Europe, they have an amazingly low-cost health insurance system that is also efficient.  Here in the US, our system is expensive, hard to navigate, and designed to funnel large amounts of money into the healthcare system.  These are just some of the differences we've noticed culturally speaking.  There have also been some technological differences as well as legal ones.

One of the most interesting ones that reflected the social differences between the USA and Europe was the Lane Assist feature that many newer vehicles have.  When I rented a Peugeot in Brussels, I enjoyed playing with the lane assist feature by letting go of the wheel and ping-ponging around the lane. Alternatively, it was interesting to feel how much pressure I had to apply to force the steering wheel to turn enough to change lanes (a lot!) without using the turn signal.  

Alternatively, here in the USA, I rented a car that had this feature.  The feature on the American car embodies the American Ideal, "You Can't Tell Me What To Do!".  It offers little more than a suggestion before it gives up completely when you change lanes without signaling.  As for it stopping you from running off the road? Nope! No "ping-ponging" here, you're going right off the road with maybe a little annoying beep as everyone in your car dies screaming, except grandpa, he's sleeping and driving.

There are similar differences with mass transit, air travel, buses, trains...I hope to be able to share some of the experiences my wife and I have had traveling the world and I hope to be able to use that insight into their culture to speculate on how different methods of future travel or the process of traveling might look...IN THE FUTURE!!!!!  :)