Barry Jones (1) (1932–)

One of the several failed attempts to understand and forecast the socio-economic impacts of technological change, somewhat on the lines of Alvin Toffler's 'Future Shock'. The author, an Australian socialist politician falls into the usual trap of (a) not understanding how markets work and respond and (b) assuming (wrongly) that succeeding generations will become less and less able to cope with technological advances. All the evidence of history (over tens of thousands of years, not just recent centuries and decades) suggests that changes we see in the present make the future always look a tad fearsome even though as it becomes the present we respond and move on - albeit to a new set of concerns! Overall things have almost always got better. The author appears to seek political intervention in those things politicians are least competent to understand. He worries about the risk of 'technological determinism' because he doesn't see (or perhaps prefers not to see) that customers not technology and not suppliers determine how technology is used.
He does however come up with a few quotable lines, for example in his "seven laws" (most of which are nonsense): "The amount of time spent by generalists in making technically based decisions is in inverse proportion to the complexity of the subject matter".
I keep this book to remind me to be cautious in my own strategic forecasting!… (mais)