JimmyT wrote:

Projections and predictions are easy to make, but they’re only as good as the facts they are based on. Facts become outdated very quickly. Any projection involving human behavior is even more difficult. Predicting the arrival of future technology, and what its impact will be at that time, is even more prone to extreme error, but it’s fun to try anyway. The pace of innovation is accelerating, so the world will be very different in 30 or 50 years. I can’t say how or how much it will be different, but it will be like the early 1900s compared to now. We are just scratching the surface of nano-tech, gene manipulation, fusion, brain mapping, social communication, robotics and AI. With even moderate advances in each of those areas, the future possibilities are awesome.

For years I have quoted or referred to an idea first put forward by the late Arthur Clark:

He basically stated that our view of the future tends to be linear. That is, we tend to foresee as much change in the next 50 years as has occurred in the last 50. The next 10 as has occurred in the last 10… etc.

But that’s not the way that progress occurs. It occurs exponentially. And the interesting thing about that is… If you take any linear equation starting at the zero zero axis and overlay it with any exponential equation. For at least a little bit the exponential equation will lie underneath the linear one. But eventually the exponential equation will always cross over and become greater than the linear equation.

So from a forecasting standpoint: our short term predictions tend to overstate progress. But long term our predictions tend to understate progress.

Just came across this video which illustrates how change is indeed occurring exponentially. http://youtu.be/cL9Wu2kWwSY