Ofcourse everything will be smarter, smaller, cheaper etc. but what breakthrough is on the horizon what I haven’t experienced already. The PC, Internet, Broadband and the mobile were beyond comprehension… is Nano/ Bio/ Neuro-tech really the next wave or am I missing something? And what will that do to the markets, the industries, the people and a society when after years of innovation push, the horizon feels empty?!? any thoughts?
Referring to the model of tech-adoption by people like Carlota Perez, we are either on the turning-point or just surpassed it. But it is clear we are entering the end of progressive growth of new ICT-innovations. Therefor we are starting to see the end of the curve. Not perse in timing, but in expectations. There might be new revolutions in this third wave of ICT, the application-phase. More social and cultural revolutions like dealing with rights, content etc. But those revolutions are often emerging and not presented top-down and therefor lacking the suspense of expectations…
So what do ya think? Are we nearing the end of live-changing ICT-revolutions?
If yes, what will be the impact of that? Are we nearing a period like the roaring twenties?
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i have to say i am sort of ‘in the dark’ on this. but thinking about it there might be some interesting possibilities not too far way. bruce sterling is talking the internet of things. he describes a world where every object has it’s own storage of information (identity, history, location.) being interested in arphid (rfid) ‘the internet of things’ is his vision for rfid.
one of his predictions if an ‘internet of things’ emerges is that we we might see sustainability through auto recycling. he reasons that if an object is findable it will be automatically recycled. how will that change the world?
That is excatly what I mean… Especially someone like you, working in this field, should have a clear understanding of what the next wave is about. We have known that for the last 2-3 decades. So the fact hat you are ‘in the blind’ says enough =) It is just so difficult in knowing what you don’t know. The fact that we don’t know the next wave is our current blind spot.
Ofcourse there will be more revolutions varying from RFID to GRID etc etc… and especially several cultural revolutions… but the big big difference is they are not foreseen and will emerge as a surprise. We haven’t had this situation since a long long time!
Do you mean that everything you are talking about was an improvement of something already there and that we are now entering a phase in which that can no longer be said? Because I doubt whether the world wide web was foreseen. True the progress to broadband was to be expected, though.
So to answer your question: yes we are probably at the end of the third ICT-wave. Looking at for instance David Moschella, the last wave would be a content-centric wave. But they will probably not be as groundbreaking as before.
A shift in our current paradigm is thus to be expected. Such things can never be predicted I think. But is that a problem?
Interesting how difficult is to bring this feeling across… and the more I realize that something important is there!
Ofcourse the WWW was not foreseen if you talk 1980… but in the ninetees the web was there… just not at your home… it was about to happen…. recent decades there was always a promise about to happen… what is the promise of 2008-2010? I really don’t know.
Many of the innovations in the lats two decades were new… but after three big waves of innovations… higher bandwith, a faster PC etc is hardly groundbreaking. So the innovations on the shortlist are to me not ground breaking…
The problem is, that we are about to enter a phase without instant expectations.
So for example, what are your waiting for?
Well, they’re probably all sustainable innovations or improvements of stuff we already have: high bandwidth wireless access everywhere (in some cities around the world already a reality, but not in mine yet), 3D display in every device you can think of, all the content variations that will create… But like I said, they are not groundbreaking indeed.
I don’t think I misunderstand you. I’m simply saying that it has always been impossible to look into a new paradigm, or system, or however we want to call it. A new system that will change all the basic values that we have come to know as the ’strongholds’ of society. Like Petersen said in one of our interviews: it was impossible for the single cell organism to think about what a multi cellular organism would look like. We just might be just before such a dramatic shift again. And I have no idea what that will look like, or what to expect, because it will probably change my entire frame of reference.
But maybe I’m completely off here. In that case I don’t understand indeed. But maybe that is because I have never been waiting for ‘the next computer’ to come out, or the mobile phone to be introduced, or to having internet when it was hardly there…I didn’t see those…only when they were already there…
True… but even the time gap between an innovation being there (in the shop) and you (the mass) having one is on average three years!
I think most coming technologies are about supporting people, helping them achieve what they want. I think it is about mastering complexity. I a world with so many views, contrasts, things to do, and increased transparency made clear by technologies in the last 50 years, I think there is a big role for technologies managing this complexity. I think what is about to happen is a cultural change, technology supporting it (it’s been a while, isn’t it?)