Looking ahead 10 years by looking back

What’s the
world going to be like in the next 10 years? Maybe the best way to decide is to

look at how the world has changed in the last 10 years. And for that you need a
snapshot of the year 2000….

Clearing out the garage recently, I came across a paper from 8^th June 2000. It
was a memorable time – the headline of “Heckled, jeered, booed – Blair bombs at
the WI” will help to place it. The same day the London Millenium bridge was
opening – for the first time.

Looking for technology angles in the inside pages, I’m struck by

- what might have been (“Judge orders Microsoft breakup”)

- how things have evolved (banks of CCTV screens - all CRT displays)

- how things don’t change (an on-line article about how to cut junk email into your inbox – they clearly had no idea what was coming)

- how things date REALLY quickly (lots of adverts for off-peak dialup internet)

There are also some really amazing offers like an IBM laptop with 400MHz & 6GB hard drive

for £1300 (how much!), a free MayCom Merit (who?) MP3 player from PC World, and
free film for a year from Dixons.

A few quaint things jump out from adverts – like Compaq PCs, mobile phones which look

just like phones with buttons and one2one, the mobile operator

The tech boom was just beginning to turn; two video-on-demand companies (Filmgroup and
Yes TV) were having problems floating, Carphone Warehouse was floating on the
stock market, the wait for Apple’s OS X was “getting ridiculous”, Nick Leeson helped
launch an internet betting service (honestly) and a Dutch company (Endemol) was
being sued for stealing the idea for a programme called “Big Brother”…

Finally there was a whole article on the new economy, focussing on Scotland, inward
investment from IBM, NEC, the Alba centre and an optoelectronics startup called
Kymata (although they went through multiple ownerships they are still there as
Gemfire).

So, in one paper, there is so much about the technology world in 2000. Does this give any
insight into the next ten years? Err, yes and no.

In terms of general trends, I could have made educated guesses about things like LCD
screens replacing CRTs, the rise of digital photography, the improving specs of
PCs and how ADSL would replace dial-up modems. And what IF Microsoft had been
broken up?? But looking back, I can’t honestly say I would have spotted which
trends/companies were really going to take off and which would fall.

I suppose that’s what make future-gazing such fun. All I can say is that the next ten
years will bring lots of changes; we just don’t know which will matter.