“We are still the masters of our fate. Rational thinking, even assisted by any conceivable electronic computers, cannot predict the future. All it can do is to map out the probability space as it appears at the present and which will be different tomorrow when one of the infinity of possible states will have materialized. Technological and social inventions are broadening this probability space all the time; it is now incomparably larger than it was before the industrial revolution—for good or for evil”.
“The
future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented. It was man’s ability to invent which has made human society what
it is. The mental processes of inventions are still mysterious. They are
rational but not logical, that is to say, not deductive”.
– Dennis Gabor, Nobel Laureate (Physics), 1971
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (535-475BC) is credited with
having said that “the only constant in this world is change”. That statement could not be truer today in a
globally connected and interdependent world.
It is probable that even Heraclitus could not have imagined the rate of
change that the world is going through today – and no credible indicators exist
to suggest a slowing down of the rate of change in the world as we know it
now. Today’s kids will grow up completely
unaware of many of the things that their parents would have grown up being part
of their daily lives. One just needs to
look at one’s daily activities to be able to quickly identify many such things
– starting with a newspaper to an analog phone at home.
Yet even the smartest philosophers, technologists, and even leaders of every
age and century have failed to accept the implications of emerging technologies
and the tectonic changes emerging technologies would bring about all around
them. One can often be excused for not
being able to recognize the impact of change in areas outside one’s areas of
knowledge, but it is clearly disturbing when leaders and recognized pundits
fail to see and acknowledge emerging trends and changes in their own areas of subject
matter expertise.
Oftentimes, as an entrepreneur, one would salivate at the prospect of having
someone famous and successful invest in one’s startup or, better still, if she
was to join the Board of Directors or Advisors. Sure, the prestige and the validation such
an addition makes is beyond any debate but one should always be guarded against
and circumspect about all the gyaan (a
Hindi word for “knowledge and insights” that better encapsulates the concept
than any other word known to the author; and the one who possesses gyaan is called the gyaani) that such an addition would bring to the Company. The derivative outcome, often not considered
fully at the very beginning, is that when one takes money from anyone, or adds
anyone to the Board, her input and feedback have to be taken and considered;
even if not always sought or valued.
One can hardly debate the impact printing has had on the preservation,
proliferation, propagation, and even procurement of knowledge across the
world. One can hardly argue that, at least till the
advent and global proliferation of the Internet, the human race and its
progress has been magnificently impacted by the printing press. It was in the early years of the last millennium
that movable presses using ceramics were actively used in China. The first metallic presses were in used in
Korea in the late 1300s. It was around
1440 that the first printing press was introduced to the western world by
Johannes Gutenberg, and that led to the mass production of religious books
initially. It is probably the deployment
of the printing press that was singularly responsible for significant
acceleration in the global propagation of Christianity after its use by the
Holy Roman Church. For the first time
ever in human history, books could be printed in hundreds of millions of copies
– an inconceivable pipedream a century earlier. The printing press was such a revolutionary
thing that it was considered “one of the three inventions that changed the
world” in 1620 by the English philosopher, Francis Bacon.
One could very reasonably argue that Bacon’s assessment was probably true till
the advent of the Internet, and maybe true even today alongside the Internet
itself.
Hilariously unbelievable as it may sound today, it is indeed true that at the
time of the early 15th Century, many in the Church and religious
order who vehemently opposed and disliked the utilization of the printing
press. It was very well articulated and
argued that the ease of printing would make monks lazy and impact their souls
and eventually drive them out of work.
The core argument at that time was that the labor in copying manuscripts
was an integral part of the process of devotion to their vocation. The printing press was perceived to be the greatest
danger to their devout souls. The
arguments were juxtaposed with reasoned and somewhat accurate arguments like
the superior durability of parchment over paper, and the relatively inferior
then quality of artistry of the printing press compared to the variety and
beauty of the handwritten manuscripts.
The standard line applied back then is so similar to more modern
refrains “it just is not good enough like the old stuff”. Nostalgia, it seems, is deeply engineered in
the human DNA, especially that of the experts.
And when everything else failed to stop the advent and use of the printing
press, the naysayers of course resorted to the same old strategy of emotional
blackmail – “he who ceases from the zeal of writing because of printing is no
true lover of the Scriptures”.
It was probably only fortunate that human beings died relatively young back
then – because the ignominy from making such outrageous statements proven to be
incorrect in one’s lifetime did not happen too often. At the speed at which new technologies and
changes get accepted in every aspect of human life today, one doubts if that
truth still holds true – thus calling for greater caution in making such
provocative, and often futile, projections and predictions.
Looking further back, a written word had to exist for it to be printed in the
first place. How was the historical
treatment of the written word any different?
Progress can come only from
change – and the opposition to change always hides the deep rooted fear or
hatred for progress. Whether it is the
fear of becoming irrelevant in a new world order, or plain hatred in seeing the
old comfortable ethos being broken down by the incumbents, it is always the
case that otherwise learned and well-meaning folks always end up on the wrong
side of history. It is not as though
this articulated opposition to change arises from anything inherent negative
but rather from a deep rooted human trait of naivety or even comfort with the
status quo and a human trait of protecting the next generation from making
mistakes.
It is doubtful there is any philosopher more widely quoted and revered than Socrates himself. Yet, one reading of what Socrates had to say about the written word and the invention of letters would probably leave the reader either doubting the veracity of the passage below, laugh at its almost innocence and incredulous theory, or simply ignore it. Yet if the same passage was left unattributed to such a great man as Socrates, one would probably dismiss these words as those from a cockney or a savant idiot.
“He who thinks, then, that
he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief
that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple
person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written
words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they
are written”.
“Writing has this strange quality, and is very much like painting; for the
creatures of painting stand like living beings, but if one asks them a
question, they preserve a solemn silence.
And so it is with the written words; you might think they spoke as if
they had intelligence, but if you question them, wishing to know about their
sayings, they always say only one and the same thing. And every word, when once it is written, is bandied about, alike
among those who understand and those who have no interest in it, and it knows
no to whom to speak or not to speak; when ill-treated or unjustly reviled it
always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help
itself”.
“Now tell me; is there not another kind of speech, or word, which shows itself to be the legitimate brother of this bastard one, both in the manner of its begetting and in its better and more powerful nature?”
“The word which is written with intelligence in the mind of the learner, which is able to defend itself and knows to whom it should speak, and before whom to be silent”.
Socrates goes on to detail a very elaborate set of arguments
against the written word with sympathy for its muteness and lifelessness. He concluded that the writing would not be
able to teach anyone anything worth knowing.
He defended the method in which he had learnt – the method of back and
forth debate and discussion amongst peers with similar intellect. He
compared reading mere written words to looking at a pond rather than swimming
in it. In fact, he made the argument
that reading the written word was akin to looking at the pond and concluding or
claiming that one could now even swim!
The irony of it all is that the written word indeed is probably the only reason
we, today and for all generations to come will, benefit from his unquestionably
great works and unmatched intellect – ignoring for a moment that his hilarious
commentary about the utility of the written word would have not faced this
scrutiny either without the written word!
To be fair, Socrates never left behind anything that was written and it
was left to future students and disciples to cement Socrates’ words and ideas
in the form of the written word. And
maybe, just maybe, scalability was not a word discovered back then or maybe
there were more pressing issues of life and death at stake than worrying about
concepts like scalability or mass adoption. Had it
not been for the discovery of the written word, and the printing press, we
would not have stood on the shoulders of these giant men like Socrates – or, at
the very least, not so soon!
It is one thing for men of religion to put their blind faith in
status quo – their product itself not suited to or open for any disruption or
innovation. After all, punishment of
biblical proportions included banishment and contentment was expected and demanded. A pursuit of anything at all would
demonstrate dissatisfaction with the natural laws of God and hence, would
invite His wrath and more.
“God hath made man upright, but they have
sought out many inventions”: Eccles. 7:29.
“Then they provoked Him to anger with their inventions, and the plague broke in upon them”: Psalms 106:29.
Pundits of more recent vintage thankfully cannot invoke such wrath, yet in the
political and social fields there abounds aplenty of curmudgeons that
immediately create a cause and effect relationship between any disaster, be it
man made or natural, with the deviant ways of the newer generation – the
disaster being a signal from God that is only interpretable and understandable
to such men of wisdom.
The reason it is worth studying the history and the evolution of
the written word in some detail from a historical perspective is because it so
clearly demonstrates over and over again the gyaan that the incumbent gyaani
championed at any time of history where change was emerging – mostly driven by
technology and its own evolution – was often misplaced or, with the benefit of
hindsight, hilarious bordering on the absurd.
In its early infancy, it would be too much to expect any new or emerging
tool or technology to be as robust as the incumbent – and its potential
greatness easy to dismiss and berate.
Things turned on its head once again a few centuries later – the telephone was
discovered in the late 1800s. The
pundits and the gyaanis of that age
started worrying about the impact of the telephone on the spread of
knowledge. It was argued then that the
spoken mode of communication would be full or errors and there would be global
miscommunication and misunderstanding – unlike the written word of the
telegraph (the incumbent), the telephone (the challenger) would not retain a
trace of record. It would almost seem
unreal today to imagine that the wise and the brave all debated how destructive
telephony could be as a new means of communication – worried about the increasing
number of railroad accidents that would happen because verbal instructions
could be misunderstood; concerned how disputes would be resolved with
he-said-she-said arguments in court with no evidence at all. If the concerns were around security and convenience,
and the related trade-offs, the debates should have been around how to make
telephony more secure and telegraphy more convenient. But often these discussions are relegated to
the background while real and imaginary fears come to the forefront of
contemporary discussions. It is scary
how many regulatory discussions also focus on fears and worries versus the
underlying need for improvement on one feature front or another – whether it is
convenience, security, safety, ease of use, distribution etc.
Is it not ironic then that some centuries (or a few millennium) later, we are
in the midst of another tectonic shift that has dominated the globe more
quickly than in the past. The decline
in voice-based communication has been rapid and marked. Some research by Nielsen reports that there
has been more than a 50% decline in the monthly voice minutes of all telephone
calls; while Washington Post reports a more than doubling in text messages in
the same period. Many young folks
would rather text than call – and they do that hundreds of times a day. The same questions of convenience and
efficiency are being raised today. Is
texting more convenient than calling?
Is it more time consuming to write out a text versus asking a quick
question on a phone? Is it more
impersonal and less intrusive? Does it
allow for greater freedom to the recipient to either ignore or only respond
when she wishes to? Which mode is more
open to misunderstanding or more secure?
What is more public or more private?
Does sharing or forwarding of text messages make it more or less
attractive or effective? The
encouraging news is that there is a solution that is emerging for each of these
legitimate concerns today even as there is no paucity of pundits expressing their
narrow moralistic views pontificating on the challenger and the incumbent.
What cannot be debated at all, however, is how large and successful companies
like Facebook have emerged so quickly to capitalize on its users commenting on
other users comments and exponentially growing its advertisement inventory in
the process; all by disrupting or enabling communication methods. There was no way any of this monetization
possibility existed in the past on people’s mostly private conversations and
discussions on varied topics ranging from the mundane to the intimate without
text and only on speech. It is not unreasonable to think that the same
recurrence of this text versus speech could potentially disrupt and eventually
kill companies like Facebook and Twitter, the elites of the social media market
today, down the line. And the pundits
of that time, will undoubtedly, once again defend text over speech! And may be some innovation is already
occurring in a basement somewhere in Silicon Valley or Seoul that will make
that happen sooner than anyone expects.
The fact is that society at large accept and are open to new technologies –
else how would all these amazing technologies and disruptions gain acceptance
and eventually succeed. Human society
at large has always proven to be a far better judge of the survival of the
fittest. If not here, definitely there
– but eventually the appropriate technologies and disruptions have always found
a home and have thrived. The killer
application has always emerged for the legitimate disruptors. It is the self-proclaimed pundits that end up
looking like cranes with their heads buried in the sand with the fullness of
time.
The naysayers often have strong vested interests in defending the
incumbents. But often the naysayers are
mighty successful and famous in their own rights – but old and advanced in
their years.
It has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt today that electric vehicles are
here to stay and are extremely popular.
The most common gyaani
refrains, mostly advocated by leading automobiles executives and experts, have
centred around four key ideas – that the range of EVs is too limited; that it
takes way too long to recharge a car’s battery; that EVs are just as
environmentally harmful as their gasoline powered grandfathers; and that EVs
are too expensive. These are probably
the most hilarious set of arguments one could have heard and hence, not even
worth refuting. Yet the naysayers have
always said it all with a face as straight as a Tendulkar straight drive.
On the surface, it would be the most obvious option to salivate if a successful stalwart were to be available or to offer to invest and / or join the board of a young company. But one should exercise due caution in such excitement. May be exceptions make the rule, but it is quite proven but many of the smartest people have also ended up making some of the dumbest predictions when it comes to technologies that would survive and thrive versus those that just won’t gain any traction.
Of course, only the rich and the famous get their words printed
to be ever remembered and therein itself runs the risk that those words could
come back to haunt them. With arrogance
often comes irrational confidence, which can be a great asset, but also exposes
people to ridicule later on. Here are
a few such confident, but totally unfounded, predictions some of the most
famous and successful of men made about emerging technologies and trends of
their time.
“There’s no chance that the
iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”— Steve Ballmer
“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, executive at 20th Century Fox, 1946
“The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company, 1903
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, Chief Engineer, British Post Office, 1876
“No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer. 640KB ought to be enough for anybody” – Bill Gates
Doubt there are too many contemporary people as gifted and smart as Christopher Stoll, a brilliant American author and astronomer. Yet his 1995 book “Silicon Snake Oil” makes for almost embarrassing reading and one wonders whether a man as smart as him could have actually written that book. In the book, Stoll calls eCommerce “baloney” and “nonviable” because of the lack of personal contact and the lack of security around fund transfers. Again, the pattern is all too obvious – rather than looking at whether and how the shortcomings can be adequately addressed and, hence, mitigated, even the smartest people cannot help but rush to judgment. Stoll probably also would have gone long on old media newspaper companies because he believed that no online database could replace the daily newspaper. Subconscious nostalgia clouds the judgment of even the smartest men.
“I predict the Internet will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse”. This statement was made by none other than Bob MetCalfe, the Father and Inventor Ethernet, which pretty much enabled the globalization of the Internet.
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” – Thomas Watson, IBM in 1943.
The respected technology writer and now a senior executive with Yahoo!, David Pogue has this to say in 2006 about the future iPhone; “Everyone’s asking me when Apple is coming out with a cell phone, and my answer is – probably never”. Of course he can be excused because he was not an insider from Apple and hence not expected to know their strategic plans, but his public proclamations prove he too was arrogant enough to predict something he had no knowledge or business to do so.
YouTube co-founder, Steve Chen said “There’s just not that many videos I want to watch” – that was before he decided to sell his company to Google. Even the disruptor had no idea how big his own disruptive idea would grow to be!
The lesson from all of this is quite humbling and instructive. Successful and smart, famous and rich human beings are not necessarily the best crystal balls of wisdom when it comes to predicting the future and picking disruptive winners. Status quo is quite comforting and success intoxicates us all. And like anything intoxicating, it ends up blurring one’s vision at the very least. Everything from one’s past and present set of experiences carry a normative feeling of comfort and nostalgia. From birth to age 30 or so, one is mostly not successful and famous or rich yet, and hence everything new is cool and exciting. Older folks call them the enthusiasm of youth – the enthusiasm used as a patronizing term for foolish inexperience. After the age of 30 or thereabouts, most human beings become nostalgic and nostalgia is a drug that numbs one’s imagination – the past, not the future, is the utopia.
Technology disruption is about believing in what may come across as impossible. The road to greatness and disruptive success is undeniably tough and lonely. One probably would be better off without the company of arrogance of past success and rather seek the humility of the wise who know that it is far tougher to invent or to disrupt than to predict. Entrepreneurs should never be easily impressed and seek out wisdom over material past successes in their advisors and backers.
Unbigotry 