Aside from putting our faith in the continuation of Moore’s Law for another decade or two, how do we anticipate the future of IT?

Let’s start by acknowledging that is not just one future lying ahead of us. There are many “potential” futures, some of which will come to fruition, and some of which will be ignored rejected. Your future may not be the same as my future; and of the millions of possible futures, many will overlap, and some will conflict. Indeed, some futures may nullify other futures, and some futures may look so appealing that they shift attention away from others that could be more beneficial in the long term.

None of us has the time, resources, or energy to identify and track all possible futures; all we can do is identify the ones we think are most likely to be of interest to ourselves, our family and friends, our employers and customers and business partners, and the society in which we live. We can nurture and plan for the futures that appear more appealing, and we can plan for, and perhaps mitigate, the ones that appear more problematic (e.g., the ones that involve pollution or severe climate change or global conflict).

Some potential futures are more visible than others; indeed, a few of them really are secret. Steve Jobs is not going to tell us what the next iPhone looks like; we’ll have to wait until he unveils it, or until some unlucky Apple employee leaves the next prototype behind in a bar. IBM and Oracle aren’t going to publish their product plans for the next 5 years in the Wall Street Journal. And Google isn’t going to reveal the details of the next generation of search-engine technology until they’re ready.

But even secretive companies like Apple have to file patent applications to protect the intellectual property they’re working on. And they have to publish “help wanted” ads to advertise job openings in the areas they’re planning to exploit in the near-term future. No doubt there are some government/military R&D groups who really, truly hide everything they do; but overall, the world is becoming more and more of an open book — if you go looking to see what’s out there.

Indeed, the irony is that the people with the most innovative ideas are desperate to tell as many people as possible. They do so in traditional ways, by publishing papers in scientific journals, and giving talks at industry conferences. They visit the big companies — the IBMs and Microsofts and Googles — looking for financial support, strategic partnerships, or outright acquisition of their ideas and whatever startup company they’ve created to develop and exploit those ideas. They visit venture capitalists, they talk to bloggers, the attend “meet-ups” in high-technology cities around the world, and they do their best to use Twitter and Facebook and other social media to help spread the news about their ideas, with the hope that it will go “viral” somehow.

Some of their ideas are in the form of university experiments; it may take several years (and several millions of dollars) to transform that research into an “operationalized” future that can change the world. But some of it is already in use — but just by a few dozen, or a few hundred, adventurous innovators and early adopters who don’t really care if anyone else is paying attention. Indeed, the who point of Geoffrey Moore’s classic book, Crossing the Chasm, was that a “chasm” exists between the small marketplace of early adopters and the massive (profitable!) marketplace of “mainstream” adopters — and that many startup companies fall into that chasm (and ultimately go bankrupt) because they don’t know how to get across to the other side.

If you’re a venture capitalist with a large bankroll for funding new projects, or if you’re the VP of Business Development at Google, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, or other such high-tech companies, then the future will come knocking on your door — in the form of bright, passionate inventors who are determined that their new ideas will change the world, if only you’ll give them some money and a quiet place to work.

But if you’re anyone else, then you’ll probably have to go looking for the future … or, more accurately, lots of possible futures. I first saw this in action back in the 1980s, when I traveled to Singapore and was invited to meet some of the people at a government-funded IT research organization. I was told that the organization had a group known as the “horizon scanning” department — whose job was to actively seek out new ideas and new technologies that were “on the horizon,” or perhaps just a little bit over the horizon … because the people involved those futures might not have the time, energy, resources, or interest to get on a plane and travel to Singapore to present their ideas. (Remember: this was in the prehistoric era before Google, before the World-Wide web, and even before open, global email. We did have fire, electricity, and running water, but not much else…)

With today’s technology, almost anyone can be a “horizon scanner,” but it’s easy to get distracted and waste a lot of time and resources going off on a dozen wild goose chases. An excellent blog posting, Horizon Scanning, provides some of the details of “systematically exploring the external environment to (1) better understand the nature and pace of change in that environment, and (2) identify potential opportunities, challenges, and likely future developments relevant to your organization.” The blog goes on to recommend a combination of “out of the box thinking; exposure to many sources, ideas, and challenges; looking beyond existing “comfort zones”; and noting opportunities and risks in an ordered fashion.

Horizon scanning can be done in several timeframes: on an ad hoc basis (e.g., in response to an unexpected crisis), on a regular schedule (e.g., one a year), or on a continuous basis. Interestingly, the group I met in Singapore emphasized the “continuous” nature of their horizon-scanning.

Even the best-organized horizon-scanning process is unlikely to identify a single future in any particular area (e.g., future computer technology); nor will it be able to forecast a future trend with absolute precision or absolute certainty. Inevitably, this means that business leaders and government leaders will find themselves having to make decisions about the future (e.g., whether or not to invest in a specific technology that may or may not be available in four, five, or six years), based on incomplete, imperfect information.

Of course, you could argue that that’s what leaders do. In a free-market, capitalistic society, the ones who do it well are paid the big bucks; and the ones who do it poorly fail, and go out of business. Those who fail to make any decision at all, because of the risk and uncertainty, eventually find that the future has become a fait accompli that forces them to change or fall by the wayside.

But at least in some areas, an alternative model is emerging — based on the “wisdom of the crowd.” Basically, this involves taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals, rather than a single expert (or leader), to assess the likelihood of a particular outcome. This is a whole subject unto itself, and rather than blabber about it endlessly in this blog, I recommend that you take a look at the Wikipedia summary of the concept, and follow that up with a review of James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds. I also suggest that you take a look at a concept known as “prediction markets,” which provide a mechanism for a “crowd” to express, update, and revise its assessment of the likelihood of various outcomes occurring. One company that provides a very interesting service in this area is Inkling Markets; I have no business relationship at all with the company, but I’m intrigued with what they’re doing, and suggest that you take a look at their service.

One last recommendation, based on some of the other trends that we’ve discussed in this thread of blog postings: make sure that your “crowd” and your horizon-scanning process includes plenty of people from the younger generation (e.g., high-school and college students who have not yet entered the work force), and make sure it includes plenty of people from developing nations and poor countries — i.e., people who probably don’t have advanced computer technology today, but who almost certainly will within the next 5-10 years.

Aside from that, you’re on your own. As American E.B. White once said, “I wake up each morning determined to change the World … and also to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes that makes planning the day a little difficult.”

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