The Perils of Predicting Technology

Zuckerberg's Metaverse bet is an old story with three possible endings.

Mark Zuckerberg has staked his fortune and the fate of Facebook — sorry, Meta — on a vision of the future in which we all spend hours each day with virtual reality goggles strapped to our heads, working and collaborating, shopping and socializing, and playing games.

Hell or heaven? Your call.

It’s not going well. Commentary on Zuck’s vision of the “Metaverse” has ranged from supportive to befuddled to mocking. Reactions to Meta’s occasional progress reports — the avatars have legs now! — have been savage. And then there’s the small matter of money. Meta said it would spend a breathtaking $10 billion developing the Metaverse. The latest figures suggest it’s closer to $15 billion. And it’s spending this money at a time when increased advertising competition is causing Meta’s revenues to plunge.

When you spend enough money to finance a war at the same time that you’re incoming is nosediving, markets get spooked: Meta’s shares lost 20% of their value Thursday morning alone. I’m not a multi-billionaire founder of a technology colossus, nor a crack analyst at a hedge fund, but I’m pretty sure this chart is not good:

But what about Zuckerberg’s vision? Will the Metaverse save Meta?

Again, I must repeat that I am neither a tech mogul nor an investment wizard. But I do have an opinion about Zuck’s plan that I can summarize succinctly: I don’t get it.

Games in VR, certainly. Some forms of shopping, why not. Occasional socializing, maybe. But I see no reason why anyone would want to wrap all these activities together into a pretend world. And I have absolutely no idea why anyone thinks that strapping on VR goggles would improve creativity, productivity, and collaboration in the workplace. As we all know only too well now, human communication is so nuanced, subtle, and complex that even a live video feed can give rise to barriers that don’t exist face-to-face. So how on earth will replacing live video with cartoon avatars do anything but create more impediments? Even if the graphics are superb. Even if the avatar has legs. This reeks of someone so in love with the technology he can’t see what is right in front of his VR goggles.

Maybe I lack Zuck’s imagination. But we are products of millions of years of evolution within this reality, and evolution has made us social animals so highly attuned to the people physically around us that even the slight twitch of a single facial muscle — or its absence — can turn a compliment into a threat or an insult into a joke. This is human nature. We can work with it, and build on it, but we push it aside at our peril. And no technology will change it, at least not for the foreseeable future.

So, yeah, I think Zuckerberg is chasing a mirage and may destroy his company in its pursuit.

Or so I think. But let me try to distance myself from my own opinion and ask what the history of technology tells us about this situation.

There are lots of stories like these. Sometimes it’s an inventor. Sometimes a business mogul. But in all the stories the key figure believes profoundly in some new technology and is sure how it will play out in future. Observers laugh. Experts scorn. But the person with the vision cannot be dissuaded and soldiers on.

And then? How do these stories end?

There are three possible conclusions.

The Resolute Hero

From the man who said heavier-than-air flight was impossible to the guy who said cellular phones would never replace land lines, the list of naysayers who look foolish in hindsight is long and full of sad trombones. Many of these critics were leading scientists and technologists. They had good reasons for their doubts. But they were wrong.

This is the history Silicon Valley loves. The hero who is mocked and reviled wins an even bigger bounty of glory when he is finally proved right. Plus he will have the satisfaction of seeing his doubters’ names appear on those lists of Top Ten Worst Tech Predictions Of All Time.

But there are different stories with different endings that Silicon Valley doesn’t cherish so much.

The Forgotten Man

Herman Kahn was the giant of futurism in the 1950s and 1960s and in his 1968 book, The Year 2000, Kahn was confident we would soon have weather control. Yes, control. We would not only be able to predict the weather with perfect precision, we would be able to turn the rain on and off like we were taking a shower.

It hasn’t worked out quite like that. Another brilliant idea from the same era — mail delivery by guided missile — also failed to pan out. And we have never used nuclear bombs in mining and construction, although a lot of smart people, including Herman Kahn, were sure we would.

There are countless stories like these but they’re largely forgotten because — quite unlike the stories of resolute heroes — it’s not in anyone’s interest to promote them.

Another example: In the 1920s, the future of air travel was a contest between propellor-driven planes with slim fuselages that land on wheels, propellor-driven planes with boat-shaped fuselages that land on water, and giant dirigibles filled with hydrogen or helium. Each had strengths and weaknesses. Each had smart, informed, passionate advocates and critics. We all know the winner of this contest but the contest itself, and the losers, are forgotten. (Fun fact: One reason why the Empire State Building has a pointy mast on top is to act as a moor for passenger blimps. Insane? Maybe. But you have to admit that getting to Manhattan by climbing down a ladder at the Empire State Building beats taking a cab from Newark.)

Something similar happened with cars. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were three varieties of automobile — gasoline-powered, steam-powered, and electric. Percentages varied from place to place but all three had has successful designs and held substantial market share. We know the names of Henry Ford and the other winners in this contest. But not the losers. (Another fun fact: Mrs. Henry Ford drove an electric car because gasoline-powered cars were started by hand-cranking and women often found that a struggle.)

People often think that the winner of contests like these must be the better technology. Not at all. The inherent strengths and weaknesses of technology matter, but so do a thousand other factors, from popular prejudice to politics to plain old luck. You think I’m typing this on a QWERTY keyboard because QWERTY is the best? Hah! Or consider that seemingly trivial fact about Mrs. Henry Ford: If women had been half of drivers at the time, gas-powered cars would have been in serious trouble. Society shapes technology at least as much as technology shapes society.

And finally, there’s a third way these stories end.

Vindicated, Eventually

In 1964, Bell (AT&T) introduced the the “Picturephone.” It was exactly what the name suggests, a telephone with a video screen. Think about that: People were making Zoom calls in the era of The Andy Griffiths Show.

The technology was wonderful. Bell forecast that there would be a million phones in use by 1980, making it a billion dollar business. But it flopped. Sales were anemic. By the time Bell pulled the plug in the 1970s, it had sunk half a billion dollars into the project, or $3.8 billion in today’s money.

But eventually the world caught up and Bell was proved right: The Picturephone was the future.

There are lots more stories like that. I recently came across a scientist who looked at the embryonic radio technology of 1901 and said that in the future we would have something that sounded an awful lot like cell phones capable of calling anywhere on the planet.

Or more prosaically, in the first decade of the 20th century, investors poured money into any company with “wireless” in its name — as in “wireless telegraph” and “wireless telephone” — because it seemed obvious that this new radio technology would revolutionize communications. They lost their shirts. But in the 1920s, radio finally exploded — and revolutionized communications.

So these stories involve initial failure but vindication in the long term. But notice the important differences in how the players in these stories would feel about their vindications.

That scientist who foresaw global cell phone coverage? Sure, it took a hundred years, so he didn’t live to see it, but the scientist was only saying, “this is possible.” Whether it comes a decade later, or a century, it proves he was right. His ghost has every right to strut.

But if you were the executive in charge of Bell’s Picturephone, would you feel deeply gratified and vindicated by the work-from-home boom in 2020? Probably not. Because you were fired by Bell in 1966. And retired in 1985. And died in 2008.

Or consider investors who lost millions in wireless in 1905. Were they thrilled when radio finally took off in the 1920s? Again, probably not.

There’s a world of difference between observers and actors.

Scientists or science-fiction writers who imagine what a technology may one day become are observers. They’re only trying to see what is possible. For them, time is largely immaterial.

But executives and investors want to make something happen. For them, timing is everything.

One last illustration: Take a look at the guy below, demonstrating the future of television in 1963 yet looking a lot like Mark Zuckerberg today.

The man in that photo is Huge Gernsback, an early radio pioneer who coined the term “science fiction” and founded the first science fiction magazine in 1926. (The Hugo Awards are named in his honour.) That photo is Gernsback doing what Gernsback did — imagining what the future could look like, some day. The fact that no one wore headsets like that in the 1970s and 1980s doesn't matter. That photo isn’t embarrassing to Hugo Gernsback. In fact, now that VR headsets are a thing, I think he looks damned clever.

That photo of Mark Zuckerberg, above, is superficially similar. But if the Metaverse as he envisions it does not come to pass, or does not come to pass in time to save Meta, his photo will be a lot more embarrassing.

Maybe that’s not fair. But that’s life when you’re the multi-billionaire founder of a technology colossus.