THE MAIN ONE Predictable Thing About Technology

... Is that it is unpredictable.

Making predictions about anything is really a tricky business. It's often fraught with problems and compounded by two factors: way too many variables and too many people.

Making predictions in the wonderful world of technology is approximately as rough since it gets. You see a trend, a fad, or a new craze, join it, extrapolate, and then go and get everything totally wrong.

For example, at the turn of the 20th century, it was predicted that passenger air balloon travel - pioneered by the likes of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin - would be commoditized and become the pre-eminent means of mass transit. In fact, it will be so popular, by the 1980s, people could have their very own personal air balloon as their primary method of conveyance.

Obviously, this gaze into the future didn't take into account the airplane, which end that pearl of foresight.

get more info with looking forward is that people do it such painfully straight lines, because the previous example demonstrates. The telephone is another useful example; who may have predicted mobile phones at that time Alexander Graham Bell was fussing around with the technological equivalent of paper cups and wet string?

No one could have. Furthermore, how could anyone have predicted that these mobile telephones would one day have cameras built-in? Or that you could send written messages in it? You only have to go back 10 years, and such ideas would be derided as foolish drivel.

The future is really a curly thing, and in the world of it, the driving force behind a lot of the confusion is convergence.

Now there is a buzzword if I have you ever heard one. Which becomes the next big problem with predicting future trends in technology: let's get two awesome gizmos and merge them; people will like it!

Err, no! What drives check is anyone's guess. What drives need is utility: two completely different parts of the mind are increasingly being exercised, here, one more than the other!

If something doesn't fulfill a practical purpose, then it's neither use nor ornament.

This future-predicting thing is even harder nowadays, but in a means, even the most outlandish theory could have its day. Things are changing so quickly that new technologies are emerging literally overnight. And considering that people's needs may also be changing, evolving, and emerging, who knows?

Going back even further, desire, need - call it what you will - includes a common source. The engine of change is people, society, lifestyle, and a requirement to manage, re-route and/or if you need to, delegate all this data and information.

The Apple Newton was way before its time. A bunch of clever guys 'n' gals sat in a room and made an extraordinary prediction about how people would "consume" data and information, plus they were right on the money - the only real problem being that they were over 10 years early!

Now, people are on the road. People focus on the move, hold down long-distance relationships, work with colleagues across time zones, and manage bank accounts in a cafe while drinking a cup of chai.

The only certainty is the same one that has been pontificated upon since forever: things change. Things often get together in intriguing, mysterious, and eminently useful ways.

So here's my prediction: things will never be small enough, big enough, fast enough, cool enough, or cheap enough! Am website ?

Wayne Smallman is the man behind Octane Interactive, a web design [1], web applications development [2] and online marketing [3] agency based in Yorkshire, England which has been around since 1999.