Sunday, August 31, 2008

Innovation in other fields

Innovation is not limited to technology. Cris Angel has revolutionized "magic". If you haven't seen his work, check out these videos. There's lots more on YouTube.

This is an innovative approach to a classic magic trick:



I'd say this an innovative approach to getting from one side of a pool to another:

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Satellite Communication - Analysis of a Successful Prediction


I raised a few questions in my previous post: why were early predictions of satellite communication successful? Was satellite communications inevitable, or was it driven by the creative minds of the people who predicted it's development?

David Whalens postulates that John Pierce, from AT&T's Bell Telephone Lab, identified satellite communications as a billion-dollar technology. Hmmmmm.... could that impact the likelihood of success for this prediction? By 1960, AT&T filed for permission from the FCC to launch an experimental communication satellite.

Richard Albright provided some interesting perspectives on technical forecasts. He notes that 80% of forecasts in computers and communications are correct, while forecasts in other areas are less than 50% correct. He lists a few potential reasons why:

  1. Sustained exponential trends in enabling technologies. It's easier to extrapolate (predict) when you have more sample points to work with.
  2. Lower investment for innovation. Technology advances have dropped the cost barriers, so we can effectively iterate more solutions for less cost. This allows many people from many organisations to make contributions to the progression.

Personally, I believe that the likelihood of success for any prediction will be directly proportional to the potential profit that can be made from it's success. Of course there are other factors (like gravity and other technical, political, organizational hurdles), but I believe that greed is a powerful force that can significantly impact the success of any technological prediction.

Satellite Communication - a Successful Prediction

Aurthur Clarke, a Sci-Fi author, published a technical paper in 1945 titled: "Extra-terrestrial Relays – Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage?" Clarke later described the technical concept of satellite communications in essays he published between 1958 and 1961.

In 1967 Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener published "The Year 2000", which listed 100 technology innovations for the 20th century. One of their many successful predictions included this one: "Direct broadcasts from satellites to home receivers". Kahn and Wiener basically extended Clarke's vision to predict wide-spread commercial use of satellite communications.

Satellite communications have become a many-billion-dollar technology. What made this such a successful prediction? Was the future inevitable, and completely independent of these predictions? Or did these predictions influence the future? I'll explore these questions in my next post.

Y2K Crisis - Analysis of a Failed Prediction

The predicted catastrophic 'end-of-the-world' consequences of Y2K did not happen. Did the predictions prevent the disaster? This is analogous to asking whether a prediction enables itself to become true (e.g. self-fulfilling prophecy).

There are many examples of companies that made significant investments in patching their software to avoid the predicted problems from the date-change transition. In fact, the US spent $100 billion on the Y2k problem ($8.5 Billion on Federal government alone)!

Was the $100 billion justified? I was not surprised to read that the Govt folks who fueled this level of spending determined that it was justified (self-fulfilling justification). The fact is, there was not enough time or money to re-write all the software in the world, and yet the end-of-the-world did not occur.

Finkelstein describes some factors that fueled the panic that led to the gross exaggerations (the end of the world as we know it):

  1. Public ignorance led to panic. Many religious organizations exploited the situation to predict the end of the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKv563gbJbE
  2. Business managers created more panic when they suddenly realized their businesses depended on computer technologies, none of which they really understood.
  3. IT managers exploited the panic to justify increased budgets for new equipment and various software projects.
  4. Consultants exploited the panic, "hoping to charge companies thousands of dollars a day to fix the problem."