Inside Digital Media

Although he died four years ago, author Michael Crichton brilliantly anticipated future technologies and their implications through fiction. For example, the dinosaur cloning in his 1990 novel Jurassic Park preceding the first “real world” cloning of a sheep named Dolly in 1996. Without Crichton’s speculative story-telling, the significance of Dolly’s creation probably would have been underestimated by the public. Interestingly, YouTube hosts this ten minute Crichton interview produced in 1999 in which he discusses technological changes in the 21st century.

Twelve years later he’s already “missed” on two major predictions.

Download five minute audio narration to iPhone, iPad, and iPod.

First, he did not believe readers would routinely use portable electronic screens, expect for reference books such as encyclopedias and dictionaries. He reasoned that if Bill Gates was unalterably habituated to printing paper copies – as the Microsoft founder was reported to have said — then the typical reader would also be unlikely to make a paradigm shift to portable screens.  

Second, Crichton was concerned that prominent technological trends had already passed a point where they might foster opportunities for new competitors. Instead he sensed they were inducing an opposite effect whereby the applicable industries were becoming increasingly concentrated. He cited two examples.

One was computer software, which he implied would not likely escape Microsoft domination. A second was telecommunications where he forecast a steadily declining number of competitors. While he was obviously wrong about Microsoft, he may still be correct about the concentration of the telecommunications industry, particularly as it applies to cellular carriers which are now pretty much dominated by Verizon and AT&T in the United States.

But Crichton redeems his reputation toward the end of the interview. Basically, he conceded that all predictions must be qualified as speculative because “the future is unknowable.” The author provided a lucid illustration.

Imagine it is 1900 and someone from the future is describing 20th century for you. From your perspective, the United States had only recently closed its frontier and much of the country was still wild. You could only recently get across it by train. One-in-six women died in childbirth. Everyone was vulnerable to infectious diseases. Horse manure constrained the growth of cities. Great Britain was the country with the (1) highest living standard, (2) best educated populace, (3) most wealth, and (4) most stable currency.

Yet tomorrow’s visitor tells you airplanes shall become the basic form of long-distance travel enabling you to get to Europe overnight. On a typical weekday 10,000 airplanes are aloft and each is carrying a hundred or more people.  Yet passengers are more bored than fascinated with viewing the earth from 30,000 feet. More commonly they complain about the food quality in flight. He would tell you that a handful of countries have thousands of bombs, each of which could destroy an entire city. Collectively the bombs may well be able to end all life on earth if they are ever used.

Similarly, cities would be bigger than you could ever imagine while only a few horses would be observed on their streets. Instead, most everyone would have an automobile, with air-conditioning, and electronic geo-navigation. Infections diseases would hardly ever lead to death for most adults. Mothers would rarely die in childbirth. Adults, and even children, would use electronic appliances enabling communications instantaneously with others in most any civilized area on the planet. All the nearly incomprehensible capabilities of radio, TV, and computers would be routine and portable.

As a listener from 1900 you would likely consider such predictions to be fanciful, at best. Even if you could accept them as true, the most important ones would also be the ones that were unexpected. The last point is Crichton’s essential message.

Whatever the changes in the 21st century, it is likely that the biggest ones will be surprising. In that context, presently it appears likely that we haven’t even seen the first one yet. Or, if we have, it is only incipient much like airplanes, electronic communications, and automobiles were in 1912.

But if it is incipient…what is it?