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From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Technology Forecasting
Message-ID: <9002240412.AA14891@world.std.com>
Date: 24 Feb 90 04:12:45 GMT
References: <1930@husc6.harvard.edu>
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Organization: The Internet
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From: uunet!husc6.harvard.edu!popvax!weber  (R09400@RPWeber)
>The main problem of forecasting is uncertainty. Trends are unhelpful
>in dealing with uncertainty since they lead to roadsigns or milestones
>that tell you if something has or has not happened.  For example,
>we all know that the cost of computing has been declining and is likely
>to do so. What does knowing the trend help us to forecast or understand?
>I would suggest nothing.  However, if one were to think about the
>future in terms of events, then an event such as, Apple will introduce
>a "throwaway mac II" for $ 600 in 1994 , is an event that reflects
>the declining cost of computing.  We can then ask, did this event
>happen or not? The future, then, is made of sequences of events.

That's very well said, and subtle enough that I hope most people read
it again.

The first question which comes to my mind is, is this an either/or
situation? Don't the trend lines at least provide an envelope of
possibility to place events in, a probability space basically.

Something lying outside of the extrapolation boundary implies a
"catastrophic precursor", such as a new chip technology allowing a
sudden 100x speed-up, so we go back and look for that.

        -Barry Shein

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