Old Predictions
Making predictions is generally foolish since any prediction specific enough to be interesting will, invariably be wrong. Predictions that are the most influential are likely to be self-defeating, since preparing for a future changes it. Nonetheless, I'll give it a shot. In fact, if you look at some of the full essays and my Masters Thesis, I can claim a pretty good track record. My main failing is to be thinking too far ahead. Still, just a quick look at some of my older predictions. Rather than prescience, they seem to be the result of experiences I happened to have had.
- Online computing. I happened to have gotten into online services in 1966 at White-Weld. Dialing up a computer and interacting with it over arbitrary distances via a network seemed the norm.
- In the early 70's I started to explore federated systems. This is due to my experience in trying to extend timesharing models to multiple machines. It was a combination of my experience at Interactive Data as the built a computer center on the other coast and my Multics experience with shared memory. The basic idea was that read-only data could be "shared" efficiently by caching. This extended to caching data elements between systems that didn't trust each other. Distributed databases made naive an unnecessary assumptions which put much too high a value on perfect consistency.
- Personal computing. This is an aspect of federated systems since each was an agent of its users. I was used to having these systems to myself with no worry about the cost.
- Microtransactions, my Masters Thesis, were an obvious result of starting to think about charge for resources and realizing that users needed charges in terms of services they buy, not in terms of the raw materials. An obvious result of thinking about consumer services.
- Personal Computer II. In writing VisiCalc, we were creating a product and reveling in the freedom that came from not having an operating system reinterpreting the hardware. This was in stark contrast to the Unix world (including MIT's Athena project) stubbornly sticking to a model of computing limited by other's definition of what services an operating system should provide and their willingness to accept much lower performance.
- Electronic Mail. I did Lotus Express in 1986, a decade too soon. But I realized that we would have to sell the concept of electronic mail. Unfortunately, Lotus sold it as a terminal program instead. Lotus Express was also meant to be a basis for electronic transactions, not just person to person messaging.
- Networking. We are still in the early stages with the focus still being on the Web. But having been used to networking since the 60's, it is an obvious requirement. My effort to make home networking viable is still in the early stages.
- Answering machines, pagers, cellular phones etc. I don't claim that I invented them but when I first started using them they were shunned as geek or yuppie toys. I used them because of their utility despite this image. And, over time, they have transformed from toys for social outcasts to normal and even necessary tools.
What about my misses? Too many to discuss here. And, conveniently, I forget most of them.