Most predictions about “the future” turn out to be wrong, if not in substance, then surely in timing. Aside from that, few operating executives can afford to place big strategic bets on trends that might evolve over decades. They have a hard enough time making decisions with a five-year or 10-year horizon.
Occasionally, though, big predictions turn out to be correct, though it might take three decades to find out. Though the internet now is pervasive, not all predictions about the internet were correct. That is not as surprising as predictions made before the “internet” or “web” actually existed.
The impact of communications technology on economic and social life never was a primary concern for sociologist Daniel Bell. “Post-industrial society” or “the information society” constitute the notable body of his work of interest to professionals in the internet or connectivity businesses.
But note some of his speculations from 1979 about the “merging of telephone, computers and television into a single...system that allows for transmission of data and interaction between personas or between computers.”
Though it is a term we do not use anymore, he predicts a convergence of computers, TV, and telephones into a single system for real time content retrieval--he specifically uses the term “search”--and transactions, including what we now call “e-commerce.”
He predicted that information including “news, weather, financial information, classified ads and catalogs” would be “displayed on home television consoles.” Okay, the focus on TV screens turned out to be less significant than use of personal computers (which, though invented, were a hobbyist device until Apple’s 1977 commercialization of the Apple II), smartphones, tablets, smart watches and other ubiquitous screens.
He called that “teletext.”
He predicted that “facsimile systems” would be used to send documents and mail. He likely was not thinking of analog facsimile systems but digital transmission of text content (email, PDF, word processing documents and other images.
He probably did not think specifically of user-generated content including photos, images and full-motion video, though the use of multimedia was predicted.
He also predicted the commercial use of “interactive online computer networks” that we experience today as apps and websites.
He never used the words “internet,” “web,” “touchscreen,” “mobile,” “application,” “speech to text,” “broadband” or “mouse.” As the TV was the only widely-available screen, it probably only made sense that this would be the ubiquitous display, as low resolution as that device was, pre-high definition TV and before 4K.
Even the largely-correct predictions might take 20 to 40 years to materialize. It is not about technology availability so much as actual commercial impact and value, the point where significant deployment and value has happened.
It can take 10 years for any successful and important innovation to be adopted and used by half of households, for example. Business applications can take longer to reach substantial commercialization. Big and systemically important technology-driven innovations routinely take 30 years to reach fruition, some note.
Electricity, the steam engine, the internal combustion engine and transistors are often cited as general purpose technologies that create widespread economic change. Some might be tempted to tout the revenue upside from 5G edge computing and internet of things services in that category. We will not know for some time.
Still, it is fair to note that even popular technologies and products take some time to reach ubiquity.
But it would not be historically unusual for many touted 5G innovations to achieve commercial success until the time of 6G. That is worth keeping in mind with predictions about 5G, internet of things and edge computing.
We might well have much of the technology available, but not the developed, ubiquitous platforms, for quite some time to come.
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