CS73N NoteFuture

Started by Gio Wiederhold, 26 Jan 2000, updated 25 Feb 2002, 21 Feb 2004, 13, 14 May 2005, 20 April 2006.  Given the subject, this web page can never be complete.

What is the Future?

There will be only one actual future, but when planning one must consider alternatives. It will be uncertain which alternative will actual occur, and there are events that can occur that were not covered in the alternatives you considered.

Since we only know the past and the present, that's what we must start off with.

1. In the hard sciences we have principles that we trust will hold in the future: gravity, the melting point of ice, etc.
2. We have some knowledge of our current tangible resources: oil, coal, etc., but are quite uncertain how those resources will grow.
3. We have information in resource consumption, per capita or per dollar of gross national product, but expect that those will change, but only slowly.
4. We have fairly good estimates of the world population, but are less certain about growth. There are relationships to income per capita, but wars and ideology can change their applicability.
5. Changes in social values are very hard to predict: how much will people be willing to spend for major expense categories: shelter, food, education, entertainment, travel, communication. In general it requires major social changes to change these numbers greatly by say by a factor of two -- but they do change over time.  Spending more on one category, say housing, means spending less on the others.

These issues may seem far fetched for many CS73N projects, but if you are an Internet business, you must be able to estimate the number of consumers you might have, and what they or your sponsors are willing to spend.

Planning

To deal with the problem of failing to consider alternatives try to keep the future simple, and if possible, chose alternatives that are simple complements: you will get your Stanford BS in 2009 or not.

Uncertainty is dealt with by assigning a risk.  You might consider the risk of destructive global warming, say the sea-level rising by 10 feet by 2075, to be 45%.

That risk by itself may cause you (and our politicians) not take any action. But now the cost must be considered.  If the cost of mitigating the effect of the sea-level rise is $1 000B, then it makes economic sense to spend $450B on mitigation.

Describing the Future

Predicting the future is hard, but not doing it makes it impossible to value investments, as your projects, that have benefits in the future. 

 

1. The near future, say 5 years ahead will be characterized by widespread availability of technology and capabilities that exist now. 
2. The next period, say 5 to 15 years will see availability of some technology and capabilities that people dream about now, and are the subject of advanced research.
3. In the period of 15 to 40 years hence there are bound to be effects of some of the social changes that occur over time.  There would be new resources as well, but they cannot assumed to be infinite, as optimists assumed in 1950s with power due to nuclear fusion.
4. In the period from 40 to 100 years only the hard physical constraints are certain. But still, the totals have to add up.  It is unlikely that all of the world population would have a per capita income (adjusted for inflation of course) matching the U.S. and Europe of today -- 2006.

 

It has been observed that predictions overestimate the short term effects and underestimate the medium term effects.  That happens probably because enthusiasts, in their own social circle, underestimate the social changes needed for broad adoption of new technology. But in the longer range those social changes do occur, to a greater extent than understood at the time.

Research

For innovative work, i.e., research projects in general there are some rules that I have collected, that I will copy now. Decide if and to what extent they apply to you:

Heilmeyer's Catechism:

1 What is the problem, why is it hard?

2 How is it solved today?

3 What is the new technical idea; why can we succeed now?

4 What is the impact if successful?

5 How will the program be organized?

6 How will intermediate results be generated?

7 How will you measure progress?

8 What will it cost?

[George Heilmeyer, ex ARPA director, then TI, GE Aero, then at Bellcore, retired?]

What are you doing for whom [Heilmeyer's Litany]

Don't issue rifles to the band in an effort to be relevant [D.E.Liddle, Interval Res. Corp.]

What does the last statement mean?

 

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