The future isn't what it used to be

Further into my digression into usability land -- a fine and useful place to digress, I might add -- I ran across the introduction to Bruce Tognazzini's Tog on Software Design, written in 1994, predicting the tumult of the next decade. Demonstrating that being a brilliant UI designer does not necessarily make one a brilliant futurologist, it nicely summarizes the "internet will change everything" vibe that was particularly strong then and still alive and kicking to this day. As such, it provides a fine chance to jump on my "not ... so ... fast" hobby horse and respond. Maybe even get it out of my system for a while.

Nah.

Following is a series of quotes, probably on the hairy edge of fair use. I had originally done the old point-by-point reply, but the result was tedious even for me to read, so instead let's pause to contemplate some of the more forceful statments in the area of technology ...

[W]ithin only a few more years, electronic readers thinner than this book, featuring high-definition, paper-white displays, will begin the slow death-knell for the tree mausoleums we call bookstores.
...
The three major operating systems in use today, DOS/Windows, Macintosh, and Unix, were all launched in the seventies. They are old, tired, and creaking under the weight of today's tasks and opportunities. A new generation of object-oriented systems is waiting in the wings.
...
[Cyberspace] will be an alternate universe that will be just as sensory, just as real, just as compelling as the physical universe to which we have until now been bound.

... economics ...

Every retail business from small stores to shopping centers to even the large discount superstores will feel an increasing pinch from mail-order, as people shop comfortably and safely in the privacy of their own homes from electronic, interactive catalogs.
...
a new electronic economy will likely soon rise, based on a system of barter and anonymous electronic currency that not even the finest nets of government intrusion will be able to sieve. [Bitcoin, anyone? --D.H. May 2015]

... society ...

Security is as much an illusion, as naïve, idealistic hackers automate their activities and release them, copyright-free, to an awaiting world of less talented thieves and charlatans. Orwell's prediction of intrusion is indeed coming true, but government is taking a back seat to the activities of both our largest corporations and our next-door neighbors. The trend will be reversed as the network is finally made safe, both for business and for individuals, but it will be accomplished by new technology, new social custom, and new approaches to law. The old will not work.
...
More and more corporations are embracing telecommuting, freeing their workers from the drudgery of the morning commute and society from the wear, tear, upkeep, and pollution of their physical vehicles. They will flit around Cyberspace instead, leaving in their wake only a trail of ones and zeros.
...
Dry-as-dust, committee-created and politically-safe textbooks will be swept away by the tide of rough, raw, real knowledge pouring forth from the Cyberspace spigot.

... and the creative world ...

As the revolution continues, our society will enjoy a blossoming of creative expression the likes of which the world has never seen.
...
[W]e are also seeing the emergence of a new and powerful form of expression, as works grow, change, and divide, with each new artist adding to these living collages of color, form, and action. If history repeats itself--and it will--we can expect a period of increasing repression as corporate intellectual property attorneys try desperately to hold onto the past.
...
Writers will no longer need to curry the favor of a publisher to be heard, and readers will be faced with a bewildering array of unrefereed, often inaccurate (to put it mildly), works.

Start with what more-or-less panned out: Object-oriented development has taken root. People do shop online. People do telecommute. Corporate intellectual property attorneys have indeed tried to put various genies back in their bottles. Blogs supply a bewildering array of unrefereed works (not to be confused with "rough, raw, real knowledge pouring forth"). Whether anyone reads them is a different matter.

Much more prominent here is what didn't happen, and there's a clear pattern: The new did not sweep aside the old. The most telling phrase along those lines is "mail-order". If you look at online shopping as a completely new way of doing business, then it's obvious that WebVan, eToys and Pets.com are going to slay the dinosaurs. But if you look at the web as the latest heir to the Sears Catalog, it's no surprise what actually happened. Far from feeling the pinch, the big box stores have simply added online shopping to their marketing arsenal.

And so on down the line: Object-oriented platforms are definitely here, but they generally run on DOS/Windows, Unix/Linux or the Mac. Various net-borne security threats have come along, but a scam is still a scam and a bank is still a bank. Some people telecommute now, but most can't and many would prefer not to. Wikipedia came along but textbooks are still here. Blogs and twitter came along, but major media outlets are still here. Record labels still produce music, studios still produce movies and publishers still publish. Often on paper, even.

I've left out a few more of the original predictions in the interest of brevity and because, though they would be interesting to discuss, they would take longer to go into in sufficient depth. I'm thinking particularly of the items about licensing fees and micropayments, and the have/have not divide. However I don't believe these omissions materially affect my main thesis that this piece, and many like it, are based mainly on taking what's hot at the moment and predicting that it will push everything else aside.

Why, then, the willingness to believe that today's particular preocupations will devour the future? Paradoxically, I think it may come of an inability to see change. If, to take a contemporary example, Twitter and social networking are all that everyone's talking (or tweeting) about, then simple inertia can lead one to assume that they're all that everyone will be talking about tomorrow, or in a month, or in a decade.

This is evident in one of the more jarring ironies in the piece: Directly after declaring that "Saying Information Superhighway is no longer cool," Tog goes on to extoll Cyberspace.

Remember Cyberspace?

[For a bit more on this thread, see this later post --D.H. Dec 2015]