Geek News: Flying cars, online toys: Tech forecast gone awry

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

This is a basic principle of making projections, or at least should be. But it’s a principle that has been ignored throughout the relatively short history of technological soothsaying.

Here’s an example: Flying cars. In the first half of the 20th century many people in the habit of making prophesies about technology claimed that by late in the 20th century we’d all own flying cars. Yet it’s the first year of the 21st century, and I’ve never met a flying-car owner.

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The technology is not complicated; flying cars are well within Detroit’s capabilities. Still, we don’t have them. Why not? A couple of reasons. First, the cost. The laws of physics ensure that flying cars are expensive to build and to “drive.” Simply lifting these things into the air and keeping them there would be expensive, at least with current technology. (People complain about the cost of gas today — keeping cars airborne would be far more expensive.)

Then there are the negative aspects of the technology; and all technologies have negatives along with the positives. Even if these vehicles could be cheap to buy and run, you might not want to have one, and society in general might not want to allow them.

Do you really want that reckless kid down the block from you, the one that’s always driving through the neighborhood at crazy speeds, flying over your house? What about the old people we’ve all heard about who are a threat to road users — you want to put them into the air? Imagine the cost of teaching people to fly, not just drive. And after all, how many people really want to fly? Most people do it because they have to, but the idea of flying every day is not one that most people would relish.

So it was no surprise to me to hear that the auto industry is now backing off another prophesy, “build-to-order.” Not so long ago we heard that custom cars would become a matter of course. Actually this is a prophesy that is supposed to relate to just about any product we buy — that technology would allow manufacturers to customize each and every product. No longer would you pick an off-the-shelf car, boat, or jacket. You would define exactly what you wanted, and that’s what you would get. In theory.

In practice this is an idea whose time has not come, and probably won’t for a while. Auto industry executives, interviewed at the 2001 North American International Auto Show, are now saying that American customers simply don’t care that much about build-to-order. They’re not willing to wait, and they are quite happy with what’s available already.

Of course the flip side of this coin is that if it didn’t take six weeks to six months to get a special-order car, maybe they would special order them! And while some analysts claim that build-to-order would actually save the industry money in the long run, that’s an unproved theory, and build-to-order would certainly cost billions of dollars to get rolling.

The build-to-order idea is an example of techno-enthusiasm out of control. Now, I’m not saying that projections won’t come to pass, but that people in the business of promoting and reporting on technologies often provide projections that are way too optimistic. We’re seeing the same thing in the Internet arena, as the projections of a year or two ago are now being trashed.

The biggest example is online commerce. By now we were supposed to be buying just about everything online, but here’s an interesting statistic: This Christmas the toys sold through eToys and Amazon/Toys R US, accounted for 1.5% of toy sales. Add all the other online toy stores and you probably still don’t get above 1.6 percent.

“This is yet another indication,” one industry analyst said, “that e-tailing may not take over the world to the extent that some observers had previously thought.”

My question is, why did these observers think this in the first place? What basis had they for their inane and unrealistic projections? We could all be buying everything online by now, but there are great reasons why we’re not. Such as convenience (yes, it really is easier to buy dog food at the supermarket than at Pets.com) and information (it doesn’t matter how many photographs and how much text Furniture.com provided about a sofa, it doesn’t beat what I learn when I sit in it). Which is especially funny when you consider that convenience and information are two of the bywords of e-commerce.

Here’s another principle, one intended for the recipients of techno-prophesies this time: “Double the time, half the promise.” Listen to analysts claims with this in mind, and you won’t go far wrong.