Posted on Mon, Jan. 06, 2003
The ghosts of predictions past
BY MIKE LANGBERG
Knight Ridder News Service
Illustration by Shannon Brady
Predicting the future is easy. Sticking around to see the outcome of your predictions is hard. Ten years ago, I consulted several Silicon Valley experts and came up with 'Scenes from 2002,' showing how technology would change our lives in a decade. Published on Oct. 25, 1992, my scenario blended tech hope and tech hype.
Now that 2002 is past, I've decided to revisit my crystal-ball gazing and rate myself against the real world. I'll stick my neck out again with predictions for 2012 (see accompanying story). So how'd I do? Overall, I'd give myself a B -- dead-on predictions are balanced against very wrong ideas. Here are the point-by-point details:
INTELLIGENT AGENTS
At 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, 2002, the bed phone rings. It's the programmed wake-up call for Nancy Newstuff, a real estate agent who lives with her husband, Ned, and 10-year-old son, Nelson.
The flat-panel display lights up with the image of this year's hot Hollywood hunk, teen star Macaulay Culkin, whom Nancy has selected to deliver her morning greeting. After the third time Macaulay says, "Wake up, Nancy," she responds, "I'm up, I'm up," and Macaulay starts delivering a personalized summary of news, weather and local traffic options.
Report card: D. Computerized "intelligent agents," such as the virtual Macaulay Culkin, were a hot topic 10 years ago and looked achievable within a decade. But the technology -- especially reliable speech recognition and realistic text-to-speech conversion -- has proven elusive. As the old joke goes: Intelligent agents are the technology of the future, and always will be.
TO AN APPOINTMENT
Behind the wheel of her electrically powered 1999 General Motors Megavolt, Nancy retrieves her voice-mail messages on the car phone.
A client is eager to look at new-home listings. Nancy calls the office central computer and, using carefully chosen voice instructions, orders it to send pictures of several homes to her client by high-resolution color fax.
Report card: A and B. I give myself an A for predicting the arrival of electric cars. They're not yet a big part of the market, but electric and hybrid vehicles are no longer an unusual sight.
Using wireless phones in the car, while not necessarily a safe practice, is certainly common today. I only get a B for predicting Nancy would use a voice-response system to retrieve messages. Such systems exist today, but aren't widely used. High-resolution color fax never happened because people now share images by attaching digital pictures to e-mail messages.
SHOWING A HOME
Shown a home, Nancy's clients are eager to buy. Nancy takes her compu-phone out of her purse and calls into a local bank. Writing on the phone's screen with a stylus, Nancy assures the potential buyers they can afford the house.
Report card: A. The "compu-phone," exists in the form of wireless "communicators" such as the Handspring Treo and T-Mobile Sidekick, costing only a few hundred dollars and providing access to Web sites that can answer questions such as how big a mortgage home buyers can afford.
AT THE OFFICE
When Nancy arrives at the office, she clips on her employee badge. The badge includes a tiny radio transmitter identifying her to the office monitoring system.
While Nancy is talking with her friend Susan in an adjoining office, the monitoring system automatically transfers an incoming videophone call for Nancy onto Susan's phone. It's a reluctant seller with an offer on his home that he worries is too low. As they talk, Nancy displays on the screen a list of recent home sales in the neighborhood. Either Nancy or the client can touch any listing on the screen to call up a picture of the home and details of the sale.
Report card: C and B+. The technology for "active" employee badges exists, but hasn't been adopted in a big way because it's too expensive and many people are reluctant to have employers tracking their movements.
Two people in separate locations viewing the same material on their computer screens is an everyday occurrence, but collaboration software that allows each person to make changes is still in its early stages.
LUNCH
On the way to a park for lunch, Nancy grabs a sandwich and her five-pound portable satellite TV.
Sitting on a park bench, Nancy unfolds the collapsible two-foot dish, pops up the 10-inch flat screen and watches today's episode of the newly merged mega-soap "As the Hospital Turns in Santa Barbara" beamed from a satellite 22,300 miles overhead.
Report card: B. Direct-broadcast satellite television, which didn't exist in 1992, is now a certified hit, with somewhere around 19 million homes in the United States subscribing to either DirecTV or Dish Network.
However, the need to precisely aim the receiving dish has prevented the development of portable satellite TV players. Portable players are due next year, meanwhile, for the XM and Sirius satellite radio services.
SHOPPING
On the way home from work, Nancy decides to look for a dress. She asks the car phone to tell her which stores are having sales.
With a call into an electronic Yellow Pages database and coordination with the car's satellite navigation system, a display screen produces a map showing Nancy's location and the nearest stores holding sales on women's clothing.
Report card: C. In-car electronic navigation systems have been available for several years, but are still expensive and rare.
There are a few services, such as General Motor's OnStar, that gives a vehicle's location to a human operator, who will then tell the driver how to reach nearby stores. But the process isn't yet automated.
AT THE STORE
Nancy sees a floral print dress on a mannequin and steps over to the "magic mirror" kiosk. The kiosk takes a video image of Nancy's face and then displays an image of her wearing the dress.
Nancy inserts a credit card and gets the disappointing news that her size isn't in stock. The kiosk offers to deliver the dress in 10 days, but Nancy decides she doesn't want to wait that long and leaves.
Report card: D. This type of kiosk is still in the prototype stage, with just a handful of big retailers testing in-store terminals that let customers find out for themselves what's in stock.
A few online clothing stores allow visitors to customize a virtual model's facial features and body shape, but not to superimpose an image of the user's face.
VIDEO RENTAL
At her final stop on the way home, Nancy goes to the local CD video rental store and checks out "Back to the Future VII."
That evening, she pushes aside a painting on the living room wall to reveal an 11-foot by 6-foot flat-panel high-resolution TV screen on which Nancy and Ned watch the movie.
Report card: A and C. What I called the CD Video emerged five years ago under the name DVD and became one of the most popular new products in consumer electronics history, sending video cassette recorders and movies on videotape into a slow fade.
Big flat-panel high-resolution TV screens are available today, although not as large in size as I predicted and still too expensive for anyone but the wealthy.
KID'S HOMEWORK
After an afternoon playing baseball with his friends, Nelson is behind in preparing a social studies report due tomorrow.
Nancy, upset with the big bills Nelson is running up for online video services, told him last week to go to the library and research his report in books. But Nelson decides to risk parental wrath by preparing his project from the small video screen in his bedroom. While his parents watch the movie, Nelson taps into a CNN data base and pulls up video clips.
The charge comes to $47.25, but Nelson hopes his parents won't notice when the family's monthly video/phone bill -- which typically runs between $200 and $300 -- arrives at the end of the month.
Report card: B. It's now routine for children doing school projects to gather text, pictures, sounds and video clips online.
What I didn't foresee was access to this online cornucopia would come through the Internet at no cost to users, rather than through interactive television systems with user fees.
