Crystal Balls 2: Why Forecasting is Important
 
Dateline: February 22, 1998

PRESIDENT Clinton summed up the importance of forecasting in his February 6, 1998 joint press conference with the British Prime Minister. Echoing remarks made a week earlier in his State of the Union address, he said that the faster the pace of change, the further into the future it becomes necessary to look.

It is a simple but profound message. Oklahoma small-holders in the 1930s did not see massively mechanized agribusiness barreling down on them. Smith–Corona executives did not see IBM’s PCs ousting the typewriter from pride of place on the desktop. Neither IBM nor Apple saw Microsoft (and the pivotal role of the operating system) coming, and Microsoft saw Netscape (and its potential to oust Windows as the common operating system) coming barely in time. CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL did not see the Web coming, and the first two of these buckled. AT&T did not see MCI and the “Baby Bells” coming.

Most of these organizations have survived in one form or another, but only by dint of vast war chests or bargain-basement buyouts, and at the expense of employees and stockholders. Some of them are but shadows of their former selves or of what they might have been had they anticipated change.

Change is not to be taken lightly, and it does not just affect organizations. It affects individuals, too. In January this year, Egghead Software, a nationwide chain of 80 retail stores, closed them and laid off 800 of its 1,000 employees in order to sell its merchandise only over the Internet. Egghead is just the spearhead of a movement already shaking the retail industry, which sacked 55,393 workers in 1997, according to a survey conducted by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That figure was up 32 percent from 1996 and crowned retailers with the highest layoff rate of all sectors of the economy in 1997, far ahead of the second-place industrial goods sector which dismissed 38,249 workers in 1997.

Egghead evidently saw the future of retailing, but how many of its workers knew in December they would be out of work in January, and how many workers in other retail establishments are actively preparing for a new career? How many of Egghead’s competitors will survive if they too do not quickly cut their costs and expand their market by following Egghead’s lead?

Could this happen in other industries and professions? Yes, it could. All of us must look to the future, to be prepared for possible closures and layoffs as technology accelerates the de-skilling of human beings and takes over our jobs.

But there is another reason, and that is the half-life of knowledge. Some professions, such as medicine, engineering, and telecommunications, are heavily dependent on keeping pace with new knowledge. Less obviously, the entertainment, legal, politicial/civil service, and other professions are also to some extent seeing old knowledge become ever more rapidly outdated.

The problem is that acceleration in the speed, power, and connectivity of computers and technology have caused an acceleration in the output of research-based knowledge, but human evolution, unaided, is not likely to keep pace by accelerating the growth of neurons and connections in the professional's or worker's brain. There are two possible solutions, one of which is to lend evolution a hand through bionic or “cyborgian” implants.

The other ultimately involves handing over responsibility to intelligent machines—machines that may either emulate important human professional and social attributes such as touch, listening, and compassion, or, through brute-force computational prowess, be capable of doing their job (as doctors, for example) even without those attributes, in the same way that world chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov’s nemesis, an IBM computer called Deep Blue, played better chess even though it was devoid of passion and feeling.

Such machines would benefit consumers but leave the individual worker with the personal problem of what to do next with his or her career? Individuals, organizations, and the professions are best advised to begin taking steps to protect themselves from the effects of impending change through more enlightened career and practice planning, better-informed facilities planning, more flexible budgeting, and the incorporation into continuing professional education of a more futuristic technology assessment element.

An indication of the importance of the topic is that the American Hospital Association (AHA) is striving to be proactive in technology assessment, and judging by the following recent exchange on an AHA Web bulletin board, it needs to be:

As of February 7, 1998, there were no replies to these posts.

Many of AHA's technology assessment and telemedicine publications are focused on the near-term and some are already outdated. Eighteen months, remember, is a generation for a computer chip. The near-term focus is undoubtedly necessary, but discussion of and decisions regarding near-term needs would benefit greatly if placed within the context of a more long-term, futuristic outlook. Next week, we will look out thirty years.
 

  Until next week, 

 

NEXT WEEK: Crystal Balls 3: What exactly  is in store? Superhuman cyborgs and androids.

Help Wanted: Got questions or comments on this article or on any other AI-related subject under the sun? Post it in the AIBB!

Previous Features