Everything Wired Must Converge – Christopher Elliot
1. Everything Wired Must Converge – Christopher Elliot The Dangerous and Fun world of Predictions
2. Arthur C. Clarke In his 1973 collection of essay’s “Profiles of the Future”, Clarke proposed three laws of prediction:
3. Clarke’s three laws of prediction When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
4. Everything Wired Must Converge Written in 1997, details the rise of HTML and TCP/IP as common computing protocols. Describes the closed networks of AOL, CompuServe and the early adopters of the internet. Makes the bold prediction that companies who invest in networking information will be successful in the future.
5. Everything Wired Must Converge Correctly predicted the need to integrate web services with order fulfillment. Makes no mention of long tail, the rise of niche markets or social media. Plays on internets early fears (hackers, terrible online security) as potential stumbling blocks. Insinuates the early e-commerce ideas of catalogues online.
6. What about people? Looking back at the rush to adopt technology, few predicted the social aspects of network convergence. Elliot’s article is typical of the time – businesses need to converge their systems, but few expected the social aspects of change. Those who did have profited – amazon.com and ebay.com are examples.
7. Predictions are a tough business Predicting we may have flying cars or nanobots performing medical procedures is easy. Predicating how we change because of that is hard.
8. What to take away? No one knows anything about the future. We are all just guessing. Guessing about what technology is coming is way easier than the behavioral shift responding to the technology. Shirkey’sHere Comes Everybody is a nice recap of where the convergence has taken us, but even he ends the book questioning where that will take culture.
