20/20 Hindsight

It’s hard to believe that once, in the early 1980’s, human beings didn’t know what a personal computer was. Most techies may argue about how the computer caught hold in general populace — whether it was Mac or Windows — but all will agree that the 80’s was the era of computer revolution.

It’s hard to believe that once, in the early 1990’s human beings didn’t know what the internet was. Blah blah blah, the internet changed the world. We’ve all heard this before. All will agree that the 90’s was really the era of the web revolution.

It’s hard to believe that once, in the early/mid 2000’s, people didn’t really do that much on their cell phones. In fact, at the turn of the millennia, most of us (or in some cases, most of our parents) didn’t even have cell phones. Many will agree that the early 2000’s was beginning of the mobile revolution.

Personally, I find it hard to believe that once, in the mid/late 2000’s, I had to call and email people to coordinate events. It really does take some effort to think about how different life was without the social networks we have today.
The way I see the last three decades is like this:
Personal Computers in the 80’s -> More computers in the 90’s, which encourages the development of a computer network (the Internet) -> Computer technology advances through the 90’s + Infrastructure for the internet -> Development of smaller, cheaper mobile devices in the 2000’s -> Larger, and larger network of both computers and mobile devices (and with the development of online identities) -> Social Networks that take people who are already connected, and fosters those connections on the web -> ?????

 

I’ve had some pretty interesting conversations about where the big, bad world is taking us, but I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts on the matter… A pretty strong answer seems to be “The World of Big Data.” This makes sense to me — people are putting more and more data on the web every day, so naturally we need utilities that can parse through and make sense of all of this data. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

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In addition, I’d like to point out that Daniel Kahneman believes that all of this thinking ahead and thinking behind is… almost pointless. Out of everything I’ve read so far in Thinking Fast and Slow, I find this point the hardest to grapple with. From a future standpoint, the progression of computing from its inception to the current day is pretty clear. One thing just naturally led to another. Look at us now — with our phones and our computers and our social networks — we find able-minded entrepreneurs are starting companies left and right. Some of us are really doing what we’re passionate about, while others are putting down bets and speculating what the future will bring.

From Kahneman’s perspective, all of this speculation is unproductive, however. In his mind, the future is just an amalgamation of different possible scenarios that may or may not take off — he believes that there’s a significant amount of managed luck that contributes to the actual development of our current technologies. To me, looking back with 20/20 hindsight is an encouragement to look forward too, to see what’s to come.

So I’m not exactly sure how I feel about Kahneman’s thoughts on the matter.