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15b VIVIAN SOBCHACK

5.

Ibid.

6. Kuhn, Alien Zone, 53,

the twenty-first. Thus, no longer quite satisfied with screen effects and affects as they exist in twentieth-century cinema, SF —having already figured futuristic immersive technological effects and affects—has increasingly detached itself from the technological limitations of cinema itself to "real-ize" these new effects and affects in other media. That is, the genre has moved to CD-ROMs, interactive Internet games, and theme parks offering immersive SF adventures simulated in the perceived depth and motion of virtuai reality. Here the technological affect connected with technological effects has a great deal to do with the stimulation of intensified physical sensations and / or with a sense of agency and control, As the premises of the SF film have literally moved, so have its special effects and affects been technologically transformed and in turn have transformed our sense of the technological. In sum, SF—as a film genre—now faces a technological future that already exceeds the very mechanisms and industry that gave birth to and nurtured its original technological imagination.

7. For elaborations of both the technological history and cultural significance of morphing, see the essays in Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the CUItUre of Quick Change, ed. Vivian Sobchack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

N0TEs

idea to the first use or sale) and diffusion of technologies (their widespread use in the mar (table 8.1). 1 Prediction concerns

1. Martin Heidegger, "The Question Concerning Technology," trans. William Lovittf in Martin Heidegger.' Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Kretl (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 317. 2. An introduction and elaboration of this idea of the transformation of special effect into special affect can be found in Vivian Sobchack, Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Fibn (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 281—92. 3. Michae} Stern, "Making Culture i_nto Nature," in Alien Zone: Cultural Theory and Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema, ed. Annette Kuhn (London: Verso, 1990), 67. 4. Ibid., 69.

8 Stern, "Making Culture into Nature," 70.

DAVID E. NYE

8

Technological Prediction A Promethean Problem

TECHNOLOGICAL PREDLCTION is a vast area, which I. divide into three parts: prediction, forecasting, and projection. We predict the unknown, forecast possibilities, and project probabilities. f use these three terms to correspond to the division, common in business studies of innovation, between what James M. Utterback terms "invention (ideas or concepts for new products and processes), innovation (reduction of an

inventions that are fundamentally new devices. This is a more restrictive definition than the Patent Office's sense of invention, for that includes innovation, which treat as a separate category. What is the distinction? As I use the terms, the incandescent electric light was an invention, the creation of new kinds of filaments were innovations. The telephone was an invention, but the successive improvements in its operation were

innovations, for they improved an already ex• isting device There are relatively few inventions, which are fundamental

quite numerous by comparison. Innovations are improvements and accessories within the systems that breakthrough inventions

breakthroughs. In communications these would be the

make possible. The third term, projection, which I will discuss

telephone, electric light, radio, television, mainframe computer, personal computer, and the Internet. While prediction concerns

only in passing, concerns the future sales, profits, market share, and so forth of new models of established technologies.

such inventions, forecasting concerns innovations, which are Table 8.1 Three Forms of Technological Prognostication Prognosticati.on

Prediction Forecasting Projection

Device

Time Frame

Status

Central Figures

invention long term unknown inventor engineers, innovation medium term possible entrepreneurs new model short term probable designers, marketers 159

160

NYEYredlcnon 101

This is a crude division, and of course there are gray areas among predic-

do this if they want to get venture capital, and companies need

to market tion, forecasting, and projection, which might also be thought

of as pointssuch scenarios to get a return on investment.

on a continuum. Yet these distinctions are not merely a matter of this essay, after exconvenience. If one looks at the time frames involved, predicting technological innovation. affer the long term or indefinite more than mere examples, yet as something less than a fully develchoices into theoped theory, My examples come both from the history of forced to work with the shortest timewell as more recent communications devices that are already comm peting in the market, It follows from these

semanticI will return to the question of narrative at the end of prediction deals withamini_ng six propositions about periods, while forecasting focuses on immediatethese as about getting a new device perfected, into production, and electrification as market. Those making projections are technologies. frame, because they deal with new models of observations that the people cen-1. Prediction is difficult,

even for experts. trally involved in prognostication change depending upon which General Electric research labs one is dealing with. Inventors, futurologists,

categoryGeorge Wise, an historian now working at the and some academicians spec-in Schenectady, wrote his

doctoral thesis on how well scientists, inventors, ulate about fundamental sociologists predicted the future between 1890 and 1940. Examining

breakthroughs; they predict them or debunk theirand possibility But once a workable device exists, venture

capitalists, engineers,1,500 published predictions, he found that only one-

third proved correct, and consultants busy themselves with its

possibilities. And finally, whenwhile one-third were wrong and another

third were still unproved. Tech-ninew models of familiar

Technological

DAVID E.

devices are being created, designers and marketerscal experts performed only slightly better than others, Many methods were become central. Whi.le aesthetics lies beyond the concerns of the presentused, including intuition, analogy, extrapolation, studying leading indicaessay, f believe it could be argued that a considerably different aesthetictors, and deduction, but all were of roughly equal value. 6 In short, technocharacterizes invention, innovation, and product development, emphasiz-logical predictions by any method proved no more accurate than flipping a ing, respectively, technical elegance, functionalism, and beau.ty. 2coin. This result may surprise laype_rsons, but it is what a business historian, Turn on your television, and you mostly hear forecasting and projec-or an historian of technology, would expect. tion, not prediction. For example, a technology guru on. CNN recently an-If prediction has proved extremely difficult, what about forecasting? nounced that voice recognition will be the next big thing in computersSurely that ought to be easier, because it deals with already existing techbecause then keyboards can be done away with, and small computers thatnologies and relies on existing trends. Anyone interested in computers has respond to verbal commands can be embedded in useful objects every-heard of Moore's Law, formulated in 1965, which predicted, quite acct1A where. 3 Machine speech recognition is already used by telephone com- I ratelyr that computer memory would double roughly every eighteen to panies; ns possible extension and development to

replace computer key-twenty-four months. 7 Yet there are also

many famous failures of forecastboards is a forecast.ing by professionals: example suggests, technological predictions and forecasts are insaw the post

demographers, sociologists, and biologists, No one As this —World War Il baby boom coming. American birth rates had

essence little narratives about the future. They are not full-scale

narrativesfallen steadily for more than a century, and

demographers were surprised of utopia, but they are usually presented as continue. In the 1960s a great many sociologists, come. The most successful

stories about a better world towhen this decline did not of these little narratives are those that present anseeing how

much the workweek had shortened since the late nineteenth innovation as not

just desirable, but inevitable. As public relations peoplecentury,

projected that automation would reduce the average American's are well canwork time to under twenty-five hours by century's end. Congress even

aware, when investors and consumers believe such stories, they held become self-fulfilling. Selling stories of the wonders to

come has been pop-hearings on the coming crisis of leisure, which never Chicago a century ago, 4 and theyerage American today is working more

came. Instead, the avular at least since the great World's Fair in hours than in 1968. 8 Paul Ehrlich, became the stock-in-trade of

some magazines, on certain television shows,in The Population Bomb,

predicted in the early 1970s that it was already too and at

Disney's "Tomorrowland." "1k) put this another way, inventors andlate to save India from starvation? He did not foresee the tremendous incorporate research departments create not only products but compellingcreases in Third World agricultural productivity. Social trends are difficult narratives about where these things will fit into our lives. Inventors need toto anticipate. General forecasting is risky, failure common.

1 OZ

WAVID E. IN YE

contracting firms. In the 1950s Ford thought there was a market for the Edsel.

Technological forecasting is little better. In 1905 few investors forecasted that the new automobiles would replace trolley cars. 10 Street traction had grown tremendously in the previous fifteen years, and it was expanding into long-distance competition with the railroad. The automobile was still a rich man's toy, and no one predicted the emergence and impact of the automotive assembly line. In the 1930s, when only one in a hundred people had actually been up in an airplane, a majority of Americans apparently expected that soon every family would have its own plane.

And as the world stock markets of late have reminded us, business conditions are seldom stable for long. In the 1960s American utilities expected growth in electrical consumption to double in the next decade. This seemed rational, because it had doubled during each of several previous decades. The utilities did not foresee -that the energy crises and slow growth of the 1970s would trigger a move toward conservation. The energy crisis likewise caught American car makers unprepared, as they had projected continued demand for large cars and had few energy-efficient, small vehicles for sale

In 1954 Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, told the National Association of Science Writers that their children would enjoy

in 1973,

"electrical energy too cheap to meter.'02 IBM once thought the main computer business would always be mainframes and waited seven years

pattern that seems persistent, may prove unstable because of changes in

before competing directly with Digital Computer's minis.

13

Later, Apple

mistakenly thought there was a market for the Newton. In 1991 MIT Press published Technology 2007: The Future of Computing and Communications. It contains fourteen articles by leading figures in the field, but none of them discussed the Internet, which does not appear in the index. Nor does "cyberspace" or "World Wide 'Web." This failure of foresight was by no means unusual. The researchers at Microsoft did not foresee the sudden emergence of the World Wide Web either. Third are failures of technological projection, which is to say failures when looking into the future for products already in the market. Clearly, projection can be expected to work reasonably well when the economy is stable. The total demand for widgets will most likely also be stable, as well

As these examples suggest, any trend that seems obvious, and any the Technological Prediction 163

economy, changes in technology, or some combination of social and technical factors. As the mathematician John Paulos put it, "futurists such as John Naisbitt and Alvin Toffler attempt to 'add up' the causes and effects of countless local stories in order to identify and project trends." But 'linteractions among the various trends are commonly ignored, and unexpected developments, by definition, are not taken into account. As with weather forecasters, the farther ahead they predict, the less perspicacious they become.'

as extrapolations based on growth rates may prove accurate. But even a

It is not just futurists who stumble, Business historians have found that innovations rarely come from the established market leaders, who

market that is stable overall is full of competing products, and expanding and

suffer from what is sometimes called "path dependency." As James M. Utterback notes, an established firm is usually too committed to a

Technological

DAVID E.

particular conception of what its product is. This idea is embedded in

reference to sex, but the college students who served as guinea pigs

its manufacturing process and its managerial hierarchy. When a major innovation appears, the leading firm understands the technology, but remains committed to its op u erating system. IBM and the PC is a good

discovered what consumers

example. At first IBM did not take the threat seriously enough, and Apple's products, as well as severa\ others, were on the market for at

would like about it. To put this general point in a negative way, just be cause something is technologically feasible, don't expect the public to

least four years before IBM entered the field. IBM then was clever

rush out and buy it. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Consumers have to want the product. There have been many

enough to license others to manufacture its system. In most cases, when an innovation such as the PC appears,

NYE

mistaken investments in machines that work but which the public did

established industries redouble their commitment to the traditional product and pro m duction process that has made them market leaders.

not want. The classic case perhaps is the picture phone marketed by AT&T in the 1970s. It was technologically feasible, but few people

They make incremen« tal improvements in manufacturing, and yet

bought it. Yet while some apparently reasonable technologies fail to

nevertheless lose market share to the invader. One might think that this

sell, quite a few people do unexpected things. They buy Japanese electronic pets, for example,

pattern would not occur in fastchanging electronic industries, where innovations come so frequently that there is little time for routines and habits to blind participants to the ad z vantages of the next change. But

and to suggest that research and development drives the market. This is

Utterback cites a comprehensive study of the photolithographic alignment manufacturers, who supply semiconductor firms. During the

usually not so, even in the case of inventions that in retrospect seem fundamental to contemporary society: the telegraph, telephone,

successive invention and development of five distinct generations of

phonograph, and personal computer. When such things first appear, creating demand is more difficult than creating supply. At first, Samuel

machines, in no case did the market leader at one stage manage to retain its top position at the next. Each production system seems to gain a technological momenturn v inside the firm, preventing it from moving swiftly to adopt competing innovations.18 2* New technologies are market-driven. Another reason that forecasts and predictions are so hard to make is that consumers, not scientists, often discover what is "the next big thing," The new drug Viagra was originally developed without

Histories of new machines tend to focus on the process of invention,

Morse had trouble convincing anyone to invest in his telegraph. He spent five years Hlecturing, lobbying, and negotiating" before he finally convinced the U.S. Congress to pay for the construction of the first telegraph line, which ran from Washington to Baltimore. Even after it was operating he had difficulties finding customers interested in using it. Likewise, Alexander Bell could not find anyone to buy his telephone, and so he reluctantly decided to market it himself. 20 And at first Thomas Edison found few commercial applications for his phonograph, despite the sensational publicity surrounding its discovery. 21 He and his

assistants had the following commercial ideas a month after it had been

Electricity had to compete with other sources of light and power. As a

shown to the world: to make a speaking doll and other toys, to manufacture speaking "clocks . to call the hour etc. for advertisements,

motive force, electricity competed with compressed airt the steam engine, and the internal c.ombustion engine. As a sourc.e of heat, it had

for calling out directions automatically, delivering lectures, explaining

to compete with coal, gas, and oil; and as a light source, it competed

the way" andr almost as an afterthought at the end of the list, "as a musical instrument." 22 A century later, in the mid-1970s, the personal

with gas and kerosene. Given these competitors, electrical utilities did not target al] markets at once. Utilities, most of which were private,

computer, when first shown to a group of MIT professors, seemed rather uninteresting. 23 They were unable to think of many uses for the

found that expansion made the most sense as a sequence that began with

prototype machine and they suggested that perhaps the personal

the central city in the 1880s. There, department stores, hotels, clubs, and prestigious addresses provided a compact and wealthy market. These

computer would be most useful to shut-ins.

customers were willing to pay a premium for a glamorous new form of

In short, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, and personal computer, doubtless four of the most important inventions of the communications revolutionr were initially understood as curiosities. 24

lighting that was clean and safe compared to its competitors. Second, after 1888, was the street car, which carried electricity toward the urban

Their commercial value was not immediately clear. It took both investors and the public time to discover what they could use them for.

consumers of electricity. Streetcars replaced horsecars and spread farther out into the hinterland. They cost no more to run, traveled faster,

Eventually, all of these inventions became the basis for extremely large