Trends 2011- #1
February 26, 2011As a child, growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, I became a science fiction nut, and my interest in the future and what technology can achieve has endured.
In 1985, when I was in my MBA program, I took a course about “The Future.” It was taught by Harold Linstone. As a part of that course, each student wrote a scenario of what he/she thought the world would be like in 2000. I have saved my copy (It was composed on my Apple IIe. My sons were quite enthralled with it at the time, so it is preserved for all posterity in my safe deposit box.)
Among other things, I predicted that by the year 2000, there would be “terrorist attacks on our shores.” Am I prescient? Not really–To prepare for the assignment, I simply did a great deal of reading about trends at the time.
Some of my predictions were right; some were wrong. Some were right, but I had NO idea what they meant. (e.g., I predicted that we would be communicating via electronic mail, but I had NO idea that we would call it “email” and that it would dramatically change our lives.)
So..for what it’s worth, I am going to start a series of blog posts containing my predictions about what will occur over the next ten years. Some will be right; some will be wrong.. In any event I’ll be on-the-record, and it will be interesting to see the extent to which my predictions are accurate.