April 15, 2004
Herman Kahn 40 years later
I've been reading Herman Kahn's "In the year 2000", a look forward to the year 2000 written in 1965. It is instrumental to see what works in forecasting and what doesn't. Amazingly he got all the major trends right. Forecasting cell phones, satelite tv, the internet, home PCs, dropping birth rates, the rise of Japan, aging society, and the information society etc.. This raises the question, what did he get right and why? What did he get wrong?
I turns out that 80% of the forecasts in computers and communication were accurate. Paul Krugman estimates, however, that only about a third of all the forecasts materialized: “If you go down the list, you will recognize such things as cell phones, the Internet and faxes. But Mr. Kahn's list contains all kinds of things that haven't materialized. Radical new building materials. Undersea cities. Medical cures for cancer and overweight. Only about a third of what he thought were surefire things have come to pass.”
Another way of looking at it is "Where are the flying cars?" or my personal favorite, human hibernation?
This article lists all the forecasts and analyzes the results.
There are three reasons why many of the forecasted technologies do not exist. There are legal reasons, technical reasons and human organizational scale reasons.
One of the main reasons we have no flying cars is legal. As exhibited by 9/11 airplanes are dangerous and thus need to be severely regulated. A stream of flying cars similar to the LA freeway and 20 car pile-ups are legal chaos.
Some things are extremely technically difficult because they contain so many interrelated systems. Biotechnology is a perfect example of this. We have organisms that very similar to humans for testing (rats) and the tools are not particularly expensive. However, it still often takes 10 years of sustained research for a new biotech drug to appear. Our ignorance is best illustrated by Mad Cow disease (BSE) - how can a protein (a prion) cause other proteins to malform? Cross species - through the digestive system!? Medicine receives more research money than any other field but the returns are slow because the systems are so complex.
Finally most innovations that occur can be undertaken by less than 200 people for Logistic reasons. Technologies that require more than that seem only to be created under war effort (Nuclear weapons, Moon Rocket) or totalitarian states (German V1 Rocket, Pyramids). Edison only had 75 people working in his lab to produce light bulbs. Once you exceed the 200 people mark management becomes unwieldy and slows innovation. For example ITER, the international fusion consortium has spent years simply fighting over a location. There are multiple examples of this – the Darpa Great Challenge will likely produce more output than hundreds of millions given to one company. Mapping the human genome was another example of how decentralized innovation is better than centralized.
Examples:
Legal:
69. Individual flying platforms
27. The use of nuclear explosives for excavation and mining, generation of power, creation of high-temperature-pressure environments, or as a source of neutrons or other radiation
Technical – overly complex systems
19. Human hibernation for short periods (hours or days)
35. Human hibernation for relatively extensive periods (months to years)
87. Stimulated, planned, and perhaps programmed dreams
48. Physically nonharmful methods of overindulging
Logistic
94. Inexpensive road-free (and facility-free) transportation
99. Artificial moons and other methods for illuminating large areas at night