Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change

Опубликовано 6 сентября 2016, 6:25

The PC and Internet are not that big a deal.  The truth is that a new technology is not inevitable, technology change is not exponential, and the PC and Internet are no more important to society than any major invention of the past.  The genesis of this book was at Microsoft, where I began researching technology change. I discovered that much of technology’s long history has been distilled to where it resembles a myth—something like, “And lo, Betamax was created from nothing. VHS followed soon after. And there was a great battle, with VHS reigning supreme.” The actual history turned out to be more involved—and a lot more interesting—than these abbreviations. More important, the popular, simplified perception of technology change was off the mark. An important story about how technology change really happens wasn’t being told. That is the story in Future Hype.