On The Road Ahead

I bought this book some time in the Late 1990’s

Predicting the future is a fool’s errand. But if you have guessed right a bunch, it can give you the illusion that you know what coming next. The book was orignally published in 1995 but Gates released a revised and updated edition just one year later. The Internet was taking off many of the assertions he made in the book were already out of date.

I wonder what made him think the update wouldn’t be made obsolete just as quickly? Even so, I think it is valueable to present a hypothesis on where things are headed. You have to start somewhere and you will learn more as you go.

In the Afterward of the revised edtion is one idea that stuck with me that I believe to be an underlying principle of human behavior:

People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.