Robert Hickson • Nov 02, 2020 •
Writing in the magazine Foreign Affairs Scoblic & Tetlock highlight that the US spends over a trillion dollars a year on national security but is continually being surprised by events. This they put down to taking the wrong approach in thinking about the future. The tendency (not just in the US) is to extrapolate from (and so … Read More
Robert Hickson • Feb 02, 2020 •
Will the 2020’s be a case of, to borrow the words of the illustrious Martian botanist Mark Watney, “sciencing the sh*t” out of the big problems facing us? In some cases yes. In some cases no, because it isn’t science that is missing. In many other cases, maybe. If we can improve the system. Read More
Robert Hickson • Jan 15, 2020 •
Outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous. That’s a description of the lifestyle of women “flappers” in the 1920s. Could it apply to science (and scientists) in the 2020s? Actually, you could look back at the past decade and see those, or similar terms, used about some science and scientists. Sometimes justifiably, most times not. Looking ahead ten … Read More
Robert Hickson • Feb 28, 2018 •
I’ve written previously about how no one really has any idea about the effect of automation on jobs. Erin Winick has done the hard work to illustrate that by compiling the predictions of numbers of jobs created or destroyed by various pundits and studies. Mostly these predictions focus on the US, with a few … Read More
Robert Hickson • Dec 04, 2017 •
It’s coming up to that time of year when predictions start popping out like buskers playing Christmas jingles. We all know a litany of bad predictions: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union internal memo, 1876 “I think there is … Read More
Robert Hickson • Oct 10, 2017 •
In Zeno’s philosophical paradox Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. Similarly, it sometimes seems that future technologies never arrive. Grace Ballenger and Aaron Mak writing in Slate highlight the “Goldilocks” zone of technological predictions – the next big thing is neither too close to be here by Christmas, nor too far away to become purely fictional. The … Read More
Robert Hickson • Nov 13, 2016 •
SingularityU’s summit happens in Christchurch this coming week. It’s purpose is to see how to “… thrive in an exponentially changing world” I’m not a fan of SingularityU. They seem overly enamoured with exponential change, rather than taking a more considered approach to looking towards the future. However, as an event to highlight emerging technological trends it is … Read More
Robert Hickson • Jun 26, 2016 •
In my previous post I noted that the last 90 years saw a tremendous amount of change. Are the next 90 going to be as, or more, turbulent? Or as “golden”? Given that no one in 1926 could predict what the world in 2016 would be like, what’s the point now of looking ahead? One reason is … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 25, 2016 •
In one of my very first Ariadne posts I referred to the prediction pundits. You have, perhaps, noticed the prevalence of this species in the technology world. In a recent newsletter the folks at CB Insights have called this the pundit industrial complex, and illustrate it with various headlines about the future market size for drones and virtual … Read More
Robert Hickson • May 21, 2016 •
Here’s a really absurd mis-reading of biology from a Professor of History in a Huffington Post interview: The whole of biology since Darwin can be summarized in three words: “Organisms are algorithms.” I wasn’t aware that we were living in the Matrix. This is the type of talk you most commonly hear from Silicon Valley folk talking or writing about technological progress and what … Read More