21
Future Trends, Forecasting, the Age of Adaptation and More Transformative Transforms
21.1 Future Forecasts
The ongoing narrative of the past twenty chapters has been that forecasting is essentially a process of looking behind and side to side. Behind means analysing past technical and commercial success and failure, but also whether past projections and predictions were right or wrong, if yes why, if not why. Side-to-side means analysing and comparing all device options, all delivery options including guided and unguided media and all network options in terms of technical and commercial efficiency including energy and environmental efficiency.
Our thesis throughout is that if a process or product is technically inefficient it is less likely to be commercially efficient, although I have had some wry comments about Microsoft having broken this rule and yes this is the second time this morning that my computer has crashed. In network terms this means that bandwidth functionality and the value realisable from that functionality must always exceed network cost amortised over the life of the network.
We have drawn on our own past work in terms of prior published books and articles and research undertaken over the past twenty five years and the advice and guidance and suggestions of many friends and colleagues in the industry.
In this last chapter we take a final look at our research over the last five years and dangerously and presumptuously use this to make some predictions for ...
