17 thoughts and ideas on forecasting the future from paul saffo

Influx Insights — 2008-01-12T14:52:43Z

Paul Saffo, the godfather of forecasters, gave a really fantastic talk at the Long Now last night.

It was full of lots of sensible thinking suggesting, that despite the negative press against forecasters, of course, he thinks it’s more important then ever.

Saffo views the current uncertainty as opportunity, rather than an impossible challenge.

Here are some of the highlights from his talk

1.    Here’s how he graphically views his job.

2.    Every technology adoption has an S curve.

3.    We tend to over-estimate the speed of short-term adoption and under-estimate the diffusion of the technology.

4.    Most big tech trends take 20 years to develop.

5.    We are entering the age of robots-sensors are everywhere- he used the rapid progress of the technology in the DARPA challenge and Nike as examples.

6.    Look for wild cards- crazy ideas at the fringes- they help you find the boundaries

7.    His final slide was a photo of a tip jar in his local coffee house on which is written “If you fear change, leave it in here.”

8.    If you look back far enough, twice as far as you are looking forward, if you want to see early signs and signals- Y2K was first mentioned in 1985, Lucas Film developed Habitat in 1985, it’s pretty similar to Second Life today. You need good backsight, but because things are slow, even if you miss an indicator, you still have time.

9.    It’s important to be detached from your forecasts- separate what you wish for from what’s is likely.

10.    Sophisticated computation will make a radical difference to forecasting.

11.    The biggest problem for forecasters isn’t being wrong, it’s persuading people to act on forecasts.

12.    He believes the nation state is collapsing and will be replaced by city states.

13.    Things aren’t accelerating, every society has always complained that things were getting faster, even in 1503. However, more things are happening at once.

14.    He forecasts, he doesn’t predict, very important distinction.

15.    Science fiction can be a good place to look. Middle-age scientists tend to be influenced by the books they read as teenagers.

16.    Look at failures. Silicon Valley has been built on the ashes of failure; one of the catalysts for the first web revolution was developed by US Web, formed by a group of ex-interactive television developers who were given space by Apple in their old Interactive Television Department.

17.    Uncertainty is the currency of the times; the strange thing is that indicators are moving in opposite directions. Gold and Google should not be experiencing increases at the same time. Big things are happening!

Posted by Ed Cotton

influx quote of the month- william gibson

Influx Insights — 2007-07-17T22:03:30Z

William Gibson maybe one of the greatest sci-fi writers of his generation, he is also the best friend of planners everywhere. He even wrote a book about them. His new book, Spook Country, looks intersting, as usual.

In a recent interview, he gave us planners the perfect quote.

"There’s a character in my previous novel, Pattern Recognition , who argues that we can’t culturally have futures the way that we used to have futures because we don’t have a present in the sense that we used to have a present. Things are moving too quickly for us to have a present to stand on from which we can say, “oh, the future, it’s over there and it looks like this.”

Without a present, there can be no future.

Via Pasta and Vinegar

Posted by Ed Cotton

Influx Insights Tag Feed: forecasting

17 thoughts and ideas on forecasting the future from paul saffo

influx quote of the month- william gibson