A commenter reminded me of Red Sox Technologies, an essay that I wrote nine years ago about technologies that always seem promising but fail to deliver (at the time, the Red Sox were still without a World Series win). It is interesting to look at what I wrote as predictions and to evaluate them. In effect, I was predicting failure for micropayments, e-books, speech recognition, video conferencing, social networking software, and online education.
Micropayments, as they were envisioned back then, are still a non-factor.
e-books are ubiquitous, but my guess is that within a decade they will be in a phase of rapid decline. The book format just does not seem right to me for the digital world.
Speech recognition is still a disappointment, I think. Siri is looking like another iteration of “not quite there yet, but shows the potential….”
Video conferencing is still remarkably unused. In my essay, I was snarky about business meetings in general. I became very bullish on videoconferencing when I saw how it worked on Google+. But it still seems to be way under-used relative to in-person meetings. The best explanation I have heard is that there is some important signaling value in in-person meetings that overwhelms the efficiency gains from video conferencing.
Social networking software really took off. I was way off base on that one.
Online education is picking up, but the hype is still ahead of the reality. I still think that teaching=feedback, and too many educational technologies fail to put feedback front and center. I think at this point a lot of the interest in online education is driven by the fact that in regular education costs are going way up and quality is, if anything, going down.
Isn’t Skype basically successful videoconferencing? And eBooks may decline but I still I count them as having arrived successfully.
I am puzzled as to why you think ebooks will decline in popularity. Have you spent much time reading on a kindle or phone or tablet? Aside from the tablet getting a little heavy at times, the experience is very good.
“Regular education … quality is, if anything, going down.” Kling, Jan. 23, 13
“The conventional narrative of steady decline just doesn’t seem to be true. Especially when you consider the size and diversity of America’s primary education system, our results are decent and getting better. The data on this score is clear enough that this really needs to become the new conventional narrative.” Kevin Drum, Jan. 22nd, 13
“The problem with [the new conventional narratives] is that they contradict the [ X ] narrative.”
Wow, I’d be too embarrassed to ever link to that if anybody found it now (btw, you forgot a : after the http in your link). That is a list of the most transformative technologies of the coming decades and the fact that you doubted them all is cringe-worthy. Most of your analysis is so hilariously wrong, albeit with a little good stuff in there too.
1. You are dead wrong about micropayments, but I’ll grant you the existence proof is not here yet, ie so far you would appear to be right based on the empirical evidence. 😉 However, once this tech arrives and revolutionizes the economy, you and all the doubters will be eating major crow on this one.
2. You didn’t even make an argument against e-books and of course, have been proven to be completely wrong. However, I do agree with you that it is a temporary triumph and e-books can’t last. The basic problem, which is what you may be sensing, is that the book is fundamentally a print format: it isn’t interactive. Whereas even a blog like this has a rudimentary form of interactivity: we can all comment on your post. The e-book will disappear because it is too monolithic and static, but right now it is certainly ascendant.
3. I don’t know that I’d call speech recognition “a disappointment,” you are reaching to fit your conclusion. Apple and Google are investing heavily in voice recognition and it’s getting there. I agree it’s not quite here yet, or we’d all be able to chuck our keyboards, but given the millions of people now regularly using it on their mobile devices, I’d say you were wrong. Your explanation of how SR is too “sequential” made no sense to me.
4. Video conferencing is another mixed bag. I think it will be huge, but it’s only halfway there yet. The technology has been good enough for years, but I’ll agree it isn’t as ubiquitous as it’s going to be yet. The notion that there is “some important signaling value in in-person meetings” is magical thinking at its worst. As far as I’m concerned, if somebody has to trot out such a blatantly idiotic argument, they must be wrong.
The real reason is that even the most useful technology takes time to diffuse, especially when it depends heavily on big lifestyle changes, like telecommuting really taking off. But telecommuting will take off and video conferencing with it.
5. The social networking prediction is just plain hilarious, written the month after Facebook launched! You completely whiffed on that one. I do agree with you that the real endgame is reputation systems, which Facebook is kind of backing into with their Likes system. I don’t think they have a clue how to get there though, so I don’t expect them to last, just like Friendster and Orkut and Myspace before them.
6. Your feedback criticism is a good one, but as you say, the virtual classroom is finally starting to take off now. Still, I went to college in the ’90s and used one of the first online homework systems at the time; it had plenty of feedback. Online learning is going to be an explosive market, one that will bankrupt every school and college in existence. It will take longer than ebooks because it’s a much bigger change, but the results will be worth it.
‘ I don’t know that I’d call speech recognition “a disappointment,” ‘
Oh, I would. Remember, I wrote the essay almost ten years ago. Go back to that time and look at the predictions of, say, Ray Kurzweil. He basically thought that there would be no need to type in order to interface with a computer. I would say that he missed that by a mile, and if we had made any sort of bet, I would have won.
If your baseline is “Most Outspoken Proponent,” most technologies fail. If your baseline is “predictions of middle age engineers working in that area.” voice recognition is not a disappointment at all.
Fair enough, Kurzweil was probably off. However, that’s just a matter of timing, speech recognition will be the primary way that we interface with our computers, with touch and typing solely used as holdovers for situations where you want to keep your input private. And the hardware has been capable enough for a while now. Whenever we finally get SR working, I suspect we’ll find that the hardware was capable of doing good SR for decades, but the SR researchers were just too dumb in their approaches so we don’t have the software yet. So Kurzweil is not that far off, he just didn’t properly account for how the incompetence of the SR software people would delay the tech.
I honor you for linking to your bad predictions. How many of the famous academics we pay so much respect do the same?
What do you mean when you say e-books will be in a phase of rapid decline within a decade? Maybe we can have a bet? I’ll happily bet that the ratio of e-book spending to paper-book spending will increase. I’d also bet that more e-book words will be read ten years from now than are today.
I think that as people read more on electronic devices, they will want material that is more concise and more interactive. I fully accept that electronic *readers* have made it. What I doubt is that book-length manuscripts will be popular ten years from now.
Most importantly, you were wrong about the Red Sox.
Hmm, in the last week, I’ve use what I consider micropayments ($10 mil in revenue last year).
I wish I could fail so well.
Who is doing $10 mil in micropayment revenue? I’m a big proponent and I don’t think I’ve heard of this company.
Not sure what I mangled, but I meant to say I’ve used micropayments to buy music from the worlds largest music retailer, movies and shows from amazon, and played a game paid for in micropayments to a company doing a very brisk trade in micropayments.
“I still think that teaching=feedback, and too many educational technologies fail to put feedback front and center. I think at this point a lot of the interest in online education is driven by the fact that in regular education costs are going way up and quality is, if anything, going down.”
Yes teaching=feedback, but in how many classes do student get better than TA-level feedback? And why won’t that level improve when things are online, and teachers can spend a higher fraction of their time doing just that, instead of giving the same lectures over and over?