May 15th, 2010
I’ve been asked to give a short (one-hour) presentation for an on-site gathering of IT managers in a couple weeks, about the “future of IT” over the next 5-10 years. It’s something I’ve spoken about at various conferences and meetings for the past 20+ years, but it’s always fun to take a fresh look — basically to see if the future looks different today than it did yesterday.
And I’m going to try something different this time, by taking advantage of the “wisdom of the crowd” for additional insights, perspectives, agreements/disagreements, questions, and comments. These comments will most likely show up at the end of this blog posting, and a series of detailed postings to follow; but you’re welcome to send them to me by e-mail too. The blog is typically viewed by a few hundred people each day, and I’ll also announce each new posting to the roughly 4,000 people who are crazy enough to follow me on Twitter. So, none of this will get the kind of attention that Oprah Winfrey would get if she suddenly became curious about the future of IT … but it’s better than nothing.
My instinct would be to start such a presentation with a long discussion about “philosophical” issues — e.g., why it’s so difficult to make any accurate forecasts of the future, why the “generational” issue (like the reaction of the “Facebook generation” to new technology) is so important today, and why technology adoption (early adopters vs. laggards) is likely to be more important than the invention or development of new technologies. But I find that many people today are quite impatient, and they want black-and-white predictions handed to them in the form of sound-bites. It’s especially common at the end of each year, and at the end of each decade, when we all scan our favorite technology publication to see some pundit’s view of “the ten most important things that you absolutely must be ready for next year.”
So I’ll start, in the next blog posting in this series, with some more-or-less specific technology forecasts. As you might imagine, some of these will focus on hardware issues, some on software, etc. I’m hoping to get some feedback from friends, colleagues, critics, hackers, technology aficionados, and others … and we’ll see what we end up with. Once that’s done, then I’ll start looking at the philosophical issues.
Meanwhile, here’s a question for everyone to think about, as we get started: where would you look for credible discussions, predictions, and advice about the likely IT trends and developments in the next 5-10 years? If there was just one book you could recommend to someone in this area, what would it be? If there was just one conference, or one website, or one blog that you would rely on — what would it be? Alternatively, who would you turn to for advice — i.e., is it possible that you might say, “It doesn’t matter what you read, just make sure you listen to whatever Mr/Ms XYZ has to say about the future. They may not always be right, but they will have the most thought-provoking ideas.”
Leave me a comment or two, and let me know what you think. Meanwhile, I’ll start getting the next blog posting organized…
P.S. Why should you care about this? Because if you contribute any reasonably substantive comments, suggestions, or feedback (i.e., not spam or flame wars or gratuitous insults), I’ll make the final presentation available to you in PDF format (which will probably be about 20-30 slides, with embedded hyperlinks and other goodies). If you just want to lurk, that’s fine, too — and I think you’ll still get some value out of the experience…. but you won’t get the presentation.
May 15th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Q: where would I look for future developments in IT?
A1: I would take account of the sci-fi films/programs as they have more influence, mostly subliminal, than we may think
A2: I would take my own guidance/advice with input from colleagues – I have input from/to educational direction after all.
May 15th, 2010 at 1:43 pm
David,
Good point — sci fi can give us an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future, and it may influence the movement of society and industry in that direction. Who knows, for example, whether the user-interface shown in “The Minority Report” was based on what the director/actors had seen in R&D labs, or whether it provided some innovative suggestions to those R&D people?
There’s another aspect of the sci-fi film industry that I’ll get to in one of my later postings…
May 15th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
I thought you were having dinner! – L’Antico Porto
May 15th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
My two cents:
For big picture ideas, Dave Winer’s blog at http://www.scripting.com/
For future technology, the book “Rainbows End” by Vernor Vinge
May 15th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
I agree with your instinct that the velocity of adoption is the key factor in the coming years. We maybe coming to a point where ‘discontinuous innovations’ will not be the order of the day.
We are seeing the maturation of technology; on the other hand, we are seeing the second and yet, more exciting phase; the use of the existing technology to turbo-charge processes; or used in new innovative ways; or filling niches that were previously void.
I look forward to reading your completed work.
Best,
Bob
May 15th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Great idea to crowdsource, Ed! Here’s a little idea: how will the migration to IPv6 affect IT? (via @linuxfoundation’s tweet: Transition to IPv6: )
May 16th, 2010 at 1:51 am
First, let’s remember that “the only constant is change.”
The place to learn about the future is by looking at the past.
To me, IT sits in three different realms: Military, Corporate, Consumer.
The Corporate realm looks for stability. The Consumer realm looks for innovation in entertainment and communication. The military looks for innovation that enhances force-projection capability.
I would suggest that looking at what corporations do is a very bad place to look at for the future of IT.
In the military, it’s all about instant, secure, and worldwide communication, both audio and video, and both between and among people and hardware assets.
There’s lots of exiting things going on in the military but it’s not easy to follow as a general consumer.
In consumer-land, there’s the digital rights battle for produced audio and video content, and the delivery thereof, but frankly that’s been argued to death and until the patent and copyright offices are reformed the status quo (Don’t Steal) will remain in effect. I don’t see quick change there.
The adult entertainment industry, in their covert but wide-reaching niche, is leading the way in live, anywhere and on-every-device live video chat, but the subject matter makes it hard (ahem) to include their advances in corporate on-site presentations.
Finally, there is the point-to-point live video chat, device-to-device, for the latest generation smart-phones (Android, iPhone). There’s going to be a lot going on in that field in the next year and that’s going to completely revolutionize human interaction. Look there for critical developments. I am sure the military is already there.
May 16th, 2010 at 8:24 am
For credible discussions, predictions, and advice about the likely IT trends and developments… I would recommend reading ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and TechCrunch
May 16th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Well, those blogs may not be focused in predictions, but IMO they are very good showing current and hot trends, that surely will shape the near future
May 17th, 2010 at 1:20 am
I really like the idea of Technological Singularity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity). If I could live only one site – it will be Google
(it is already stored a lot in its cache). One TV channel? Let it be “Discovery Science”.