Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Home Stretch – So what have we learned

Summary and Lessons Learned in CS 855 – Futuring and Innovation

This past eleven weeks has been fast and furious. From our July residency with Dr William Halal lecturing on futuring and the principles around his think tank “TechCast”, to our exploration of Web 2.0 and the tools that are now widely available, it has been a wild ride.

Web 2.0
One of the slickest Web 2.0 tools Animoto was posted by Ted in our class. It allows you to upload pictures and set them to music to create a video trailer. I have taken some pictures from our last Residency and created a short video.

http://animoto.com/play/3ca65bf4857a660a1464abf52f4e5309


Michelle was the first in our class to demonstrate Gabcast, with its easy of use to be able to record audio blogs just by using the common telephone. I have to admit it is sometimes easier to listen to a blog and it has a nice feature that allows you to download the file so you can listen to it while you are in the car.

We explored the many faces of Google Web 2.0 from Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Groups, Google Docs, iGoogle, and the list continues on. As you can see Google really dominates the Web 2.0. With their recent purchase of YouTube they are well positioned to lead the industry into Web 3.0 (the next Microsoft). The real concern with most of Google’s Web 2.0 tools is the storing of user data and how well users privacy will be protected. Pictures that I upload to share with my family I don’t necessarily want them cached on Google’s search engine. This should be a concern for most of the Web 2.0 services we reviewed in this class not just Google.

Second Life
The idea of a virtual multi dimension environment has endless possibilities. Starting out in 2003 it has grown to almost 10M residents. It now supports real time classrooms along with a complex economic structure. The value of being able to have virtual classrooms and not only interact with a Professor, but also with other students while separated by an infinite distance is the jewel of Web 2.0. The concept of Second Life has expanded the idea of collaboration with endless possibilities. The ability to use Second Live in a work environment to conduct virtual brainstorming sessions, where it is possible to have breakout groups, but still interact as a group. The ability to be able to bring virtual teams together that are physically located on different continents.

Predictions
After reading “The Fortune Sellers” it became very clear that predicting the future is based more on luck than on science. The world around us is in constant chaos making most social systems unpredictable. The stock market is a good example of such a system. Very few market analysts are able to predict the direction of the market with any degree of consistency [1]. Areas that can be founded on hard science can achieve a higher degree of accuracy if engineering principles are applied.

Failed Predictions
Often failed predictions can be attributed to changing conditions, lack of supporting data, the lag time from the prediction to the event being too great, or inexperience of the person making the prediction. Some social systems due to their complexity make any form of prediction difficult and with a high level of uncertainty.

My failed prediction was Ford Motor Company’s flying car in the 50’s. The reason the prediction failed was due to government regulations imposed by the FAA. The air traffic infrastructure would not have been able to handle the air traffic if flying cars had gone into mass production. Matt commented that the prediction may have not failed, but been delayed and that flying cars may still become a reality. I believe that the problems that prevented flying cars from becoming a reality in the 50’s are still present today. This is likely to be an inhibiting factor until air traffic management can be fully automated and the human element removed.

Successful Predictions
One of the most widely known predictions is Moore’s law, which states that circuit density on integrated circuits will double every 18 months. This prediction was made back in 1964 and has remained true for the past 40+ years. If we look at the circumstances around this prediction we will discover that this prediction was made quickly without much thought. Gordon Moore had been asked by an electronics magazine to predict semiconductor progress over the next 10 years. The present state of the industry was 30 circuits per chip and he knew the prototypes he presently had in the lab where at 60 circuits. Taking an educated guess he expected the density in 10 years to be 600,000 circuits, a thousand-fold increase which turned out to be very precise.[2] It is amazing that one of the most famous predictions of the 21st century and it could have been surmised on the back of a cocktail napkin.

Summary
This class on Socio Technical Futuring has been one of the most inspiring courses in the doctoral program. The art of prediction was truly fascinating. It revealed what most of us already expected, that in a lot of cases the expert is no better at making predictions than we are. Some social environments are too complex to predict with the tools [1] that are available. What we should recognize is that we can only successfully predict with any degree of certainty what we have under our control. The more uncertainty, the greater the margin of error we are likely to encounter.

Referances:
[1] William A. Sherden, “The Fortune Sellers: The Big Business of Buying and Selling Predictions” John Wiley & Sons, (1998)
[2] InfoWorld CTO Forum, San Francisco, (2002), http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/gelsinger20020409.htm

1 comment:

Lyr Lobo said...

You learned a lot, Mark! So did I! *laughs*

I had a blast in CS 855 and am only sorry to see it end. Please stay in touch and let me know how I can assist with your research.

Have a great break! *waves*
Cynthia Calongne
a.k.a. Lyr Lobo in Second Life