Business - Written Thursday, June 12, 2008 by Don Tapscott - 2 Comments

Bits, bands, books…and being right too early

Those of us who make predictions about the future can often run into a particularly frustrating problem – being right, but being right too early. This is something I’ve been through a few times, particularly with the Naked Corporation – I thought, and continue to think, that it’s a great book about the future of the enterprise and transparency, but when it was published in 2003 it never really gained the traction I hoped for. Fast forward to 2007 – while I was particularly happy about how well Wikinomics was (and continues to be) received, when I saw this cover of Wired Magazine that came out around the same time… let’s just say I couldn’t help but wonder how the Naked Corporation would have fared if the timing worked out better.

Such issues of timing and prediction underlie Paul Krugman’s excellent Op-Ed piece in the NY Times called “Bits, Bands, and Books”. He opens by quickly recapping the technology bubble of the late 1990s, the inevitable collapse, and then jumps to the recent oil and food shocks that have reminded us we still live in a “material world.” But it’s what he says next that is most important:

So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

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