In future shock? Get over it

Daniel Burrus says the line charting technology advances has become 'almost vertical'. Picture / Martin Sykes

American technology futurist and business strategist Daniel Burrus will tonight teach business leaders at the University of Auckland how to see into the future.

Burrus will tell an audience of about 350 at the university's Business School how to predict technology trends and develop new products and services to take advantage of them.

"Too often in business we think the future is unpredictable," he said. "You cannot base a business strategy on uncertainty."

Burrus, 56, brings with him an impressive CV - he has set up five companies, written six books and acted as strategic adviser on future technology to global companies such as Toshiba and Dell.

Before starting his first company, the Milwaukee resident spent nine years teaching biology and physics. He used his knowledge of biology to create a method of predicting technological change using taxonomy - the classification of organisms based on similarities and relationships.

He studied technological innovation worldwide, defined 20 major categories that would drive change, including lasers and robots, and listed all the component tools for each category.

New innovations were added to the taxonomy as they occurred, revealing technological relationships that enabled Burrus to make predictions about future developments.

"The major categories are the mothers of the technological future, and every now and then they give birth to a bouncing baby new tool. So if you want to know the future of the mothers, look at the children."

Burrus said he warned executives at IBM in 1988 that profitability would shift from hardware to software by the mid-1990s.

"They listened, they liked it, but really didn't do anything ... they were slow to make that shift."

He said he had been a regular visitor to IBM ever since.

One of his proudest predictions was his 1983 assertion that human gene-code sequencing would be achieved by 2000.

"I nailed it right on the ear."

One of the most famous technology predictions, Moore's Law, was made in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. A current formulation of Moore's Law says the number of transistors per square inch of integrated circuit will double every 18 months. In 1971, Intel's 4004 processor used 2250 transistors; by 2003, the company's Itanium 2 processor contained 410 million. Such technological development has historically been a key driver for increased computer processing power.

Burrus said businesses could make predictions in 1983 about technology in 2000 based on Moore's Law, but the increased rate of change was often overlooked.

"In the '80s and '90s that wasn't a very big deal ... but right now that chart is almost vertical."

Data storage and bandwidth had followed a similar pattern and gave rise to new technology such as the iPod, Burrus said.

He is excited about what the next few years will bring and is looking forward to sharing his thoughts with the Auckland audience.

"The thing I want to get across in this presentation is that we are at a point of amazing opportunity and challenge. The challenge is that a lot of our old models are rapidly going to be breaking down."

What are some of his current predictions? Burrus said the advertising stronghold of television would be challenged as data storage technology improved viewers' ability to record shows and avoid the ads.

"The rules are changing right before our eyes," he said.

Mark Bentley, Auckland University director of advancement, said the speaker series aimed to improve economic debate in New Zealand.

"[It's about] how we can anticipate the way the world's going and beat it there."

Techno-Nostradamus

* Some of Daniel Burrus' predictions that came true include the shift away from hardware to software, and the mapping of the human gene code.
* Prediction method is based on taxonomy, or the classification of organisms based on similarities and relationships.
* Television advertising faces huge changes.