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Unpredictability of Technology

Mistakes are portals of discovery - James Joyce

Every innovation is like a tree that grows from the mistakes of those who have gone by earlier. It is very important to realise the value of these failures. They are truly the teachers.

The failures could be for numerous reasons. Technological innovation are creatures of dynamical forces and failures are part of the life. Looking positively, failures are not explicit failures but lack of success in these initiatives.

Newton said he saw farther than others by standing on the shoulders of giants. Newton built up on the work done by many contemporaries.

The failures are fantastic reference points for growth. Mankind has progressed when there have been great achievements, and none of these great achievements could have happened without understanding the failures.

It is the persistence that matters in the end. The drive to build the code that works. Trying to understand the code that refuses to break.

The technology sector has special affinity to failures, mainly caused by constant search for futuristic Next-big-things. The Next-big-things are usually extrapolations of the present (mostly unknown or promising) technologies into future context. Some changes in the plot easily derail the entire anticipated structure. The crashes are more because you have stretch a little too much over the cliff.

The chase for the NBT will always continue simply because the rewards are exceedingly great. But the most attractive part in these NBTs are the challenge that they pose their patrons.

Computer World in its list of "21 biggest technology flops" article terms it "Hype". That brings a different connotations to the failures, in this context. Hype is exaggerating benefits more than it deserves. There is a lot of marketing/business interest in creating hype, and most of these are possibly pure marketing-Frankensteins. There are many in the list that was clearly not anticipated. They were supposed to be most likely successors. Like a mathematical conjecture whose solution seems to drift farther and farther, more we try to track it.


Computerworlds's list of biggest technological flops:

  • Apple Lisa
  • Apple Newton
  • Digital audio tape
  • DIVX
  • Dot-bombs
  • Dreamcast
  • E-books
  • IBM PCjr.
  • Internet currency
  • Iridium
  • Microsoft Bob
  • The Net PC
  • NeXT
  • OS/2
  • The paperless office
  • Push technology
  • QUBE
  • Smart appliances
  • Speech recognition
  • Virtual reality
  • Web TV

Lets not write them off yet! :) You never know!


MIT's list of Emerging Technologies for coming years

  • Optical antenas
  • Metamaterials
  • Peer-to-peer vidoes
  • Personalised medical monitors
  • Compressive sensing
  • Nanohealing
  • Quantum dot-solar pwoer
  • Neuron control
  • Single cell analysis
  • Mobile augmented realities

Theres no easy way out in these predictions. We have to live through it. Some of these will win and some will disappear. May the best tech win.

:) Falkor
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