Prediction – Especially About The Future - Is Really Hard!

By Rich Kozlovich

Today I received my e-newsletter from PMP called the PMP Buzz online.  The thing I found most interesting was a well done article by Seth Jones titled, “RISE meeting looks to the future” where he quotes Jack Uldrich, who he describes as a “futurist”, best-selling author and keynote speaker at the Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), as saying we must “Be prepared to unlearn basic things you know, because the future is here … and with it will come leaps in such things as nanotechnology, robotics, gene sequencing and computer processing power”.  Those are broad generalizations that are largely true.  So what? 

Seth reports that;

“Uldrich’s talk centered on the advancement of technology, much of his discussion circled back to how it could affect the business of pesticides. From an app that can detect chemical residue on foods, to farms and lawns that can directly communicate with farmers and homeowners, this was not the stuff of science fiction but a very real near future.”

Uldrich claims; “This technology is as real as it gets, and it will affect your industry in a profound way,” “You may not realize it, but your world has already changed.” 

There is absolutely one incontrovertible fact that I have learned in my 67 years about predicting the future. Prediction.....especially about the future.....is really hard.

Years ago at a Purdue conference a prominent speaker to the pest control industry made all sorts of predictions about what was going to happen in pest control going in to the 21^st century; including a bunch of malarkey about the impact computers were going to have on the detection of pests. Well...it turned out to be hogwash.  The most important technological advancement made in the detection of pests is still a flashlight. 

Uldrich claims that electric cars can be charged in five minutes? Really? My phone can't be charged in five minutes. What car is that? Perhaps he was talking about cars being made by Tesla Motors, whose spokesman said on July 16, 2013;

“It’s not going to happen in a year from now. It’s going to be hard. But I think we can get down to five to 10 minutes”

I think we can, I think we can, I think we can the little train puffed.  So it would appear they don’t really have a battery that can be charged in five minutes.  It would appear that Uldrich must have missed that comment, or he had another car company in mind.....which I couldn't find...and the only technology that shows promise is "using cathodes made from a self-assembled three-dimensional bicontinuous nanoarchitecture consisting of an electrolytically active material sandwiched between rapid ion and electron transport pathways"....which will charge in seconds....but will also discharge in seconds. 

Let’s face it, I don’t have a great deal of confidence in five minute battery charges in the immediate future, and less in Tesla’s statements ever since the claims they made about the range of the Tesla Roadster that was called into question by the BBC and Top Gear, which generated two lawsuits for libel. 

“The dustup, as you may recall, began when Top Gear put the Tesla Roadster through its paces on the show's test track. While Jeremy Clarkson lauded the car's acceleration, the segment claimed the vehicle ran out of juice after just 55 miles of abuse. That figure is far south of the 200 mile range Tesla claims for the vehicle.

CEO Elon Musk called the show "completely phony" not long after the segment aired and brought out the legal guns.

Tesla sued twice and lost both times.  “The rest, as they say, is history.”  

Worse yet; for those who missed “the rest of the story”; the Tesla Roadster turned into a brick if the battery was allowed to drain. It couldn't be recharged and it couldn't even be pushed. The cost to replace it is around $40,000.

But all this stuff about apps and batteries and the future….let’s get real.  All this green stuff is a failure.  It isn’t just big green stuff that is failing either.  Five green technologies that tried but failed; solar powered clothes, solar gadgets, air powered cars, fuel cell powered laptops and eco friendly airplanes; all failures! Worse yet, there may have been as much as ten billion dollars spent on these ‘green’ job projects.

As for these apps that are going to detect pesticide residues on food…..well…..I won’t dismiss it outright, but I wouldn’t invest in it either.  I bought 1000 shares of a nano-tech company that seemingly had great success in creating nano-tech batteries.  It now sells for 0.0011 a share.  Yesterday it sold for 0.0012 a share.  I don’t sell it because it would cost me more to sell it than I can get a return for it, and because it is so cheap….I can’t even sell it through my on-line broker. 

Prediction….especially about the future….is really hard.  Don’t get too worked up over anything a “futurist” says.  They’re paid to say silly things.  One more thing; let’s try to fondly remember that “futurists” predicted, with great confidence, that nuclear energy was going to be so cheap it wouldn’t even be metered and computers would make offices paperless. 

Finally....I still think that nano-tech battery company is going to be a hit.  See....prediction....especially about the future...... is really hard.  You just gotta have faith!