It’s said, with some degree of accuracy I think, that those who don’t study history are bound to repeat its mistakes. Perhaps a corollary of that is that those who fail to adapt flexibly to changes in the world are in danger of ceasing to exist. A good example of the latter is the state of the once massive Eastman Kodak Company.

Usually just referred to as ‘Kodak’, the company formed in the US 1888 and quickly grew to dominate the world of photography, producing cameras (including the famous ‘Brownie’ box camera), and more importantly, photographic film – including the excellent ‘Kodachrome’. Unfortunately, the company completely failed to make the transition to modern digital photography, dispite actually making the first digital camera in 1975. In fact, in 1979 one of their employees predicted a complete shift to digital photography would occur by 2010. He was not taken too seriously at the time, and the rest is history. Once they realised the magnitude of their mistakes the company belatedly tried to adapt, but had lost so much market to the likes of Canon, Sony, etc that they couldn’t recover and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Nowadays, if you ask one of the young generation about Kodak, you’ll receive a very blank look.

With this in mind, nowadays all technology companies now try to keep an eye on the future. My old employer, BT, used to have a small ‘Futurology’ team whose job was to make educated guesses about how the world might look 5, 10, 20 or more years ahead. Sometimes they made some really interesting observations, other times you wondered what on earth they were talking about – or even what they’d been smoking.

Looking through my old files recently I stumbled across the list of predictions they made in the 2002 edition of their ‘Technology Timeline’. That’s 22 years ago, a long time in the high-tek world, and it’s fascinating reading to see what they got right – or wrong!

For example here are the predictions for the world of Telecommunications, just one of many sections covering all areas of technology. Each ‘prediction’ is essentially a significant achievement and the date by which it was expected to happen. Remember, these predictions were made in Autumn 2001, and sometimes the terminology used is a little archaic.

• Cordless home networks using Bluetooth, Piano or Jini 2001
• Photonic crystal fibre 2001
• Go-anywhere personal numbering 2002
• 70M European computers connected to Internet 2002
• Use of passive picocell 2003
• 1 billion cellular users worldwide 2003
• 10 Terabit/s on single fibre 2003
• ANT based services 2003
• Home intranet 2003
• Global terabit network 2003
• UMTS (3G) launch in U.K. 2003
• 1 Gbyte optical fibre loop memory 2005
• Video download over network at 10 x normal speed 2005
• Global broadband fibre based network 2005
• ANT based network management 2005
• Intranets dominate over Internet 2005
• Neighbourhood intranets 2005
• 1 billion mobile communication devices worldwide 2005
• Video surveillance built into phone boxes 2005
• 60% of internet accesses from mobile devices 2005
• 50% of traffic on mobile networks will be data 2005
• Domestic demand reaches 100Mbit/s per home 2010
• 90% of calls tetherless 2010
• All optic integrated logic, switching below 1 ps 2010
• Use of high density wavelength multiplexing for trunk 2010
• Use of WDM in local access 2015
• Internet achieves 75% penetration in UK 2015
• Electronic ATM switches largely obsolete & replaced by photonic versions 2020
• Simultaneous data delivery in the City 2020
• Cyberspace covers 75% of developed world 2020

There’s a whole lot more in the full document – it’s fascinating reading for all technology nerds!  Download it from the following link. Technically it’s copyright BT, but I’m sure nobody will mind!