Introduction
Predictions about the future of technology are notoriously risky. In the 1940s, Tom Watson, then chairman of IBM Corporation, made what must rank as one of the worst predictions of all time. "There is a need", he said, "for perhaps five computers in the world." By the year 2000, computers numbered in the hundreds of millions.
In Watson's day, information was a rare and expensive commodity. Today it is abundant and cheap. That transition marks a revolution in the ways we do things, and even in the way we think and live.
As anyone knows who has searched the Internet, abundant information means that we inevitably discover things that we never set out to look for. Serendipity, accidental discovery, is an everyday event.
The importance of serendipity was driven home to me while building an environmental information system. The design focussed on crucial questions, such as "Where is species X found?" But as we gathered the necessary data, a curious phenomenon emerged. Data that we collected for one purpose yielded unexpected discoveries about other matters. For instance, data on species distributions, which we needed to describe different environments, could also help us interpret seasonal colour changes in satellite images. As the volume of data grew, the number of potential discoveries soon went off the scale. Since that time, new areas of computing, especially data mining, have arisen to exploit this "serendipity effect."
The serendipity effect crops up in many contexts. Fortune-tellers, for instance, rely on people looking for associations between a horoscope and their own situation. People usually get excited about correct predictions but ignore false ones. Take a prediction such as "a day for meetings, but beware of over-doing it." The word "meeting" could apply to anything from a business conference to bumping into someone on the street. Likewise "beware of over-doing it" could refer to physical, social or financial risk and if nothing bad happens, you simply assume that you did take care.
Travellers experience the serendipity effect too. Given enough chances, the odds are good that you will meet someone you know. On visiting London for the first time, I bumped into a friend while walking down the Strand.
Life is a journey, and every day we explore the future. So unexpected events are a form of serendipity. A familiar example is the growth of credit card use. Once a status symbol for travelling business executives, plastic is rapidly replacing cash as the standard currency. A side effect arises because details of transactions are transmitted electronically. As the use of cards has increased, so too has the flow of data about consumer purchasing patterns. Automation makes it possible to collect this data in such volumes that it is a serious threat to privacy.
Serendipity turns up in two annoying forms: the platypus effect and the revenge effect. Like the platypus, many phenomena do not seem to belong anywhere. Software engineers coined the term "platypus effect" for annoying cases that do not fit their system designs. It is a by-product of complexity.
The classic way of coping with complexity is "divide and rule": carve up a big problem into lots of little ones. For instance, any CEO who tried to micro manage the work of thousands of employees would soon be lost. So companies carve up the management problem into departments, sections, and so on.
The platypus effect arises when issues don't fall neatly into the divisions we create. Like serendipity, it takes many unusual forms. Put a single wrong character in a computer program and a multi-million dollar rocket could blow up. Put a book back on the wrong shelf of a library and it is effectively lost.
The "revenge effect" (coined by Edward Tenner) refers to cases where technology that is designed to solve a problem ends up making it worse. Computers are exceedingly good at this. Remember the "paperless office"? Instead of doing away with paper in business, computers led to greater use of paper than ever before. Then there are computer viruses, hackers, and system crashes. The never-ending need to upgrade hardware and software on an almost annual basis amounts to a kind of "technology tax" that can be financially crippling.
One of the most significant side effects of information technology is its contribution to globalisation. Global business is viable because companies on different sides of the world can talk to each other and exchange money almost instantly. Perhaps the most telling results are the establishment of international money markets, and the increasing role of international traders in stock exchanges.
A subtler, but equally important effect is standardisation. Information technology is replete with standards. Without them, every electronic device would require a different kind of battery, and you would need a different video player for every movie. One side effect is that standards allow large corporations to exploit economies of scale and out-compete smaller competitors. The growth of e-commerce and the imminent expansion of web services have seen intense jockeying by major corporations who see the advantages of standards compatible with their products.
Perhaps most devastating of all are the side effects that the information revolution has wrought in the global village. Whether you live in Brazil, Finland or Korea, television is blasting an unremitting stream of western culture at the younger generation. World culture is becoming increasingly homogeneous, and extends to dress, shopping, restaurants and most importantly, to the way people live, think and behave.
The information revolution has also helped to promote terrorism. Its increasing frequency in the latter part of the Twentieth Century can be partly attributed to modern communications and the willing complicity of news media. Terrorism is effective only if people hear about it. One weakness of the media is that they report what they think will sell. Sensation sells, and terrorism most definitely is sensational.
As the world watched hijacked airliners crash into New York's World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001, the attack signalled, in no uncertain terms, the globalisation of terrorism. Such a dreadful event could not have taken place without excellent communication. Using global information and communications separate terrorist groups are now able to cooperate, to form networks, and to coordinate their activities. Instead of small groups carrying out random attacks on local targets, they can now carry out large-scale attacks on targets of international significance. No longer do national borders or local resources limit them. They can call on sympathisers for support, wherever they may be.
Computers allow us to handle vast quantities of data and enable us to cope with the complexity of the modern world. But at the same time they produce unexpected side effects. The computer is a serendipity machine leading us into the unknown. It is changing the world.
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