Interview with Bob Seidensticker, author of “Future Hype”
Ralf Haller
August 22nd, 2006
We interviewed the author of our last book review “Future Hype”, Bob Seidensticker.
Bob:
“It’s great to hear from a Swiss company. I lived in Lausanne for a couple of years, leaving (a long time ago) at age 12 — a delightful and important experience.”
What are you working on these days?
“I’m working to promote Future Hype. As you know, publishers don’t do much to promote a book, leaving that to the author. For example, I did a radio interview this morning and have a book store appearance tonight. I’m also speaking to companies and organizations about technology change.”
What motivated you to write this book?
“I’ve been an engineer for 25 years, and I’m a big fan of technology
– technology applied correctly, that is. I grew up with nuclear power and men on the moon and supersonic airplanes. Moon bases and HAL the computer and electricity too cheap to meter were just around the corner, right? Not quite. As I progressed through my career, I saw more of these failed promises plus a number of high-tech myths (products are adopted faster and faster, the Internet changes everything, and others). I’d read an article that began “We all know that technology change is exponential…” and I’d disagree after the first sentence. My motivation was a desire to set the record straight — to help technology adopters (business and consumer) see technology change correctly. After all, if we can’t see it correctly, we won’t be able to apply it correctly.”
How was the reaction from the public and critics so far?
“Overall, quite good. I’ve spoken at Microsoft and Amazon and got a good reception at both. I think that people in the industry understand much of what I’m talking about — that technology overhype is a concern, that any particular technology isn’t inevitable (despite what Marketing says about it), and so on. I’ve had reviews in Fast Company, US News and World Report, and many others. Most of the press I’ve gotten is listed on my web site (www.future-hype.com). I’ve also spoken to consumer groups. Here, I try to put technology in perspective and say that, no, things aren’t just getting faster and faster. One segment that I had in mind as I wrote the book is the senior segment. It seems that the prevailing hype tells them, “Whatever technology you went through decades ago counts for very little — if you want real change, look at all that the PC and Internet are creating!” Of course, it’s ridiculous to look at history from, say, 1930 and dismiss as insignificant the changes we’ve seen in cars and airplanes, radio and TV, the spread of electricity and telephone, dams and skyscrapers, nuclear power and space travel, and so on.”
You mention it took you 8 years to write this book. Is that indeed the case?
“Did I say 8? It was actually 7. I was at Microsoft for 8 years. I left to try to develop home education software on my own (lots of fun; not much success). After that, I began working on the book roughly half time. I hope that all that time paid off in a book that was at least well researched!”
Do you see technology over-hype as hurting or is it sometimes even necessary to at least speed up the adoption process?
“I see the marketplace as a chaotic place — an inherently chaotic place. Users complain about “feature creep,” when the next version of software contains lots of stuff they didn’t ask for. And yet, the most revolutionary products are those they never ask for — the iPod or Walkman, for example. Unfortunately, companies can’t know what products will succeed and must release a new product knowing that success is far from certain. How do we navigate this environment? I feel that technology adopters should demand that new technology to prove its worth first before they buy. In other words, I don’t want companies to work out their version 1.0 bugs using my time and money. Of course, you could respond that someone has to be the early adopter. That’s true, but if I don’t have to be, I don’t want to be. I want to be further down the adoption bell curve. And if that means that there aren’t enough early adopters for the product to be a success, then so be it. The hard truth is that most new products fail. I don’t want to be the one who bought the Beta VCR or videodisc. Obviously, there’s another side to this issue. There can be benefits to being the early adopter if it gives you a significant advantage over a competitor (and that advantage outweighs all the costs). If you sense one of those opportunities, go for it. Just do it with your eyes open.”
Has over-hyping of current technology hurt its development?
“The Internet Bubble is the best example of this. The industry made claims it couldn’t keep, and there was a backlash as reality returned. We should have seen it coming — we’ve had high tech stock booms with different technologies du jour all the way back to the Industrial Revolution. Even the Tulip Bubble of the 1630s tells the same story. One interesting way of looking at how the hype changes is to find the word or prefix that every product or IPO (initial public stock offering) tries to grab. Now, “pod” seems to be hot. Recently, we’ve also had “.com” and the “e-” prefix. In the past, we’ve seen “-tronics” or “air” or “electro-” as hot words. And in the future, we’ll be getting hype if “nano-” or “bio-” are the hot but largely meaningless words. I must admit that it’s hard to know whether the harm outweighs the good. For example, the US now has a glut of fiber optic communication lines due to overenthusiasm during the Internet Bubble. But cheap long distance communication may fuel growth in other industries to compensate (the irony, of course, is that the companies that subsidized all that fiber won’t be the ones profiting!). The Chunnel is a similar example — the initial investors didn’t get the return they expected from their investment, but consumers and shippers benefited. A cautionary tale is Iridium, the satellite phone pioneer. Just a few years after it became operational in 1998, the project was sold for less than one percent of the $3.4 billion that had been invested in it. Try to avoid the hype.”
What is the biggest over-hype currently out there and why? Overall good or bad?
“Tough question, since every industry has its examples. Artificial intelligence is probably the most interesting overhyped technology. I’m a big fan of AI (my undergraduate thesis advisor was the head of my school’s AI lab), but it has consistently failed to meet expectations. Sure, there are successes (Deep Blue beating chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997, for example), but they are always later than predicted and less important than expected. And now, we have futurists like Ray Kurzweil (a successful entrepreneur and an engaging writer) to continue this hype. Don’t get me wrong — this is exciting stuff. I just think that history teaches us that AI predictions are almost always overoptimistic.”
Do you plan to write another book soon, possibly building on this one?
“You noted in your review that the book needed to give more of a prescription. That is, given these technology myths, what do we do about it? And you’re right. I did address that in the last chapter, but I didn’t hit it hard enough. I’m trying to do a better job in the presentations I give. As I mentioned, I love technology. I have no immediate plans for another book along these lines, but that may change. I have a lot of notes that didn’t make it into the book, and I’ll be starting up a blog and a column in an online magazine soon as an outlet for this material. One thing that most excites me about the blog is getting input from readers. Writing is a solitary business, and getting feedback (thumbs up, thumbs down, additional examples, and so on) will be great.”
