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.