thehowe_v7.1

On the walk home tonight, I found myself thinking about the difficulty of making predictions, specifically in the technology and business world. The problem is not that the predictors are unintelligent; see Bill Gate's infamous "640K ought to be enough for anybody" quote. Others are well documented at the bad predictions archive.

So, if we can't blame the bad predictions on the predictors, there must be something inherently difficult about making predictions. This idea is, I think, where the difficulty comes in. It turns out, making good predictions isn't really all that hard. See, for example, Moore's Law, Brook's Law, and Hofstadter's Law. All it takes is understanding of past trends, a little insight, and the egotism to name a Law after yourself. Easy, right?

Okay, so if making predictions is really so simple, why aren't we better at it? This is the realization that I had tonight: people are very good at predicting evolutionary changes, often well in advance of when they happen. People are terrible at predicting revolutionary changes, often even when the change is happening around them.

For the sake of this argument, evolutionary changes are defined as conceptually improvements and refinements of existing techniques. For example, cramming more circuits onto a chip, or making fuels that burn cleaner. These kind of changes come from a process of slow and steady improvement, and as such can be easily predicted based on past results.

Revolutionary changes are a little harder to define. They often take the form of a completely different way of doing things, a complete paradigm shift. They might be completely new inventions, or a sudden inspired combination of existing technologies into a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Examples: the computer, the printing press, the cell phone, the internet. These kind of changes are nearly impossible to predict, and are often even incredibly difficult to recognize as they are happening. Predicting revolutionary changes is firmly set in the realm of Science Fiction.

So, what's the moral of the story? Evolutionary changes are easy to predict. Revolutionary changes are not. We must simply remember that there is a difference between the two, and hope to be lucky enough to correctly identify a revolutionary change when it's happening.