by Jaidev Adigopula

Created on: June 28, 2010   Last Updated: June 29, 2010

Since the future is a largely unknown entity, assessing the future of technology requires forecasting techniques. This article looks at some of the methods that experts use to make such assessments.

1)      Heuristic Forecasting: Involves taking an intuitive yet logical shot at what the future of technology might be. In other words doing what the likes of Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov or Arthur Clark did so well. Assessing technology in this way is very subjective and depends on the individuals doing the forecast. Nevertheless, such subjective brilliance has been useful in qualitative and sometimes radical predictions of future technology.

2)      Statistical and Extrapolation Techniques: These typically involve examining volumes of data from the past, detecting trends and extending or extrapolating those trends into the future. This extrapolation is done either by statistical correlation or by curve fitting techniques. These are rather simplistic approaches that work well for systems where trends are relatively deterministic and easy to characterize and quantify.

3)      Committee Approaches: The committee approach involves taking the opinion of a group of “experts” either together or in isolation on technology (or other) trends and the parameters affecting these trends. The opinions are retaken and gradually converged into a consensus. A particularly systematized for of the committee approach is what is known as the “Delphi Method”. The committee approach is useful where a number of interacting technologies exist and no single expert can assess the overall trend.

4)      Modeling and Simulations: Modeling as the name suggests involves building a smaller scale replica (known as the model) of the technology stage and actors thereof and then using that model to simulate what might happen into the future. Modeling and simulation is useful technique in technology assessment, but the effectiveness depends on the nature of the model used and how close the model is to reality. The model is not always easy to come up with, particularly in open ended problems such as assessing the future of technology.

5)      Cross Impact Analysis: Having its roots in the committee approach and in particular the Delphi Method, Cross Impact Analysis has been a long standing approach to science and technology forecasting. It involves analysis not just one trend but multiple related trends in order to understand the impact of each on the others. The advantage of such an approach quite simply stems from the fact that the trend in any particular technology is obviously dependent on trends in other technologies and these cross-impacts need to be accounted for.

As once can see, forecasting methods and techniques can range from making outrageously oracle-like predictions to the most scientific and mathematical analysis, each having its own place in assessing the future of technology and its impact on our lives.

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