INDUSTRY INSIGHTS :
ON NERVE & IMAGINATION
I WAS SIX YEARS OLD THE FIRST TIME I SAW THE future . My elementary school imported a steady and unusual program of guest speakers . Our assemblies featured a swami , a secret agent and , on this particular day , a wiry young man with a stage full of equipment . From inside my pint-sized body , the machinery in the auditorium that day seemed huge , a mainframe-sized collection of premium 1970s technology . Our visitor dashed from console to console , leaping thick cables , getting his gear ready . He stopped in front of a big keyboard and then looked up at us . And that ’ s when the sound started .
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* * * !“ Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic ,” Arthur C . Clarke famously wrote . He wasn ’ t talking parlor tricks . He referred to technology that so completely transcends our everyday understanding of the world that it is utterly inexplicable . Aristotle , Clarke wrote , would have been at a loss to explain how touching two pieces of metal together could unleash a devastating surge of energy . For all his genius , the philosopher ’ s understanding of science could not possibly embrace nuclear reaction .
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The mind ’ s eye can ’ t see around the corner of brain-bending scientific breakthroughs . This is one of the things that make the prophet racket so hard . A single discovery or insight can suddenly make the impossible possible , even easy . The fact that we don ’ t foresee such changes is an excusable failure of imagination . It ’ s hard , foolhardy perhaps , to predict that the impossible is within reach .
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Less forgivable is what Clarke called “ the failure of nerve .” That ’ s when all the pieces for powerful change are sitting right in front of us , ready and available , and we fail to see their potential . We ’ re so stuck on the way things have been that we don ’ t see how they might be rearranged to powerful effect . Failures of nerve often seem ridiculous after the fact , because the outcome seems so obvious in hindsight . In 1985 , a New York Times column predicted a miserable future for laptop computers :
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On the whole , people don ’ t want to lug a computer with them to the beach or on a train to while away hours they would rather spend reading the sports or business section of the newspaper . Somehow , the microcomputer industry has assumed that everyone would love to have a keyboard grafted on as an extension of their fingers . It just is not so .…
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Yes , there are a lot of people who would like to be able to work on a computer at home . But would they really want to carry one back from the office with them ? It would be much simpler to take home a few floppy disks tucked into an attache case .… ![ T ] he real future of the laptop computer
will remain in the specialized niche markets . Because no matter how inexpensive the machines become , and no matter how sophisticated their software , I still can ’ t imagine the average user taking one along when going fishing .
ISSUE ONE · THIRDWAVE 117