Asimov: the Great Science Fiction Oracle
Tags: Forecasting, Predictions, Online Education, Technology

Source: Brooks, Greenhut, & Marshall (1988). Big [Motion Picture]

Throughout history, humans have been captivated by the power of predicting and forecasting the future. Ancient Greeks, far and wide, from the 8th through the 4th century B.C.E., climbed to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, and sought ethylene-intoxicated oracles for their counsel on personal and political decisions (Spiller, Hale, & De Boer, 2002). Whether this fantastical power was derived from chemical portals opened into the third eye, or some of Hollywood’s mystical Zoltar magic, as in the motion picture Big (Brooks, Greenhut, & Marshall, 1988), humans have a primal instinct to plan for their future. The following essay explores the modern concepts of forecasting and predictions in the context of innovation, reveals an infamous technological innovation prediction, and highlights some forces which brought that innovation to the fore.

Innovating with Forecasting and Predictions

Predictions and forecasting are necessary when an element of future uncertainty exists (Wade, 2012). Modern Oracles, like UPENN professor J. Scott Armstrong (2001) from the Wharton School, has studied a systematic approach to formal forecasting procedures. For Armstrong (2005), forecasts determined the future based on systematic data collected by the scientific method much like current weather forecasts. On the other hand, predictions are a more arbitrary approach, such as personal opinions, intuition or superstition, and less accurate than forecasts (Armostrong, 2005).

Often forecasting innovation becomes muddled by organizational planning for what the world should, according to the milieu, should look like (Armstrong, 2001). The recent innovators of Silicon Valley claim the best method to predict the future is to shape it by intruding into the flow of everyday determinations and engineering possible choices available (Leonard, 2008) (Rosamond, 2019). Zuboff (2019) described such “surveillance capitalist prediction imperative” as a provocation to the fundamental right of a human’s capacity to promise, intend, imagine, and create a future (Rosamond, 2019). Armstrong (2001) mentions a number of these alternatives to forecasting, such as buying insurance, hedging, and just-in-time systems that either avoid forecasting or make the future another’s responsibility.

Science Fiction or a Prediction?

Like the ancient Oracles of the past, writers have often embraced predicting the future as part of their creative visions. One American writer, Isaac Asimov, was a prolific science fiction writer of over 500 books and the only author to have one book in nine of the ten classifications in the Dewey decimal system (Seiler & Jenkins, 2008). In his most famous work, the Foundation trilogy, a future historian created an almost perfect science of perceiving the future, called “psychohistory,” which produced mathematically accurate determinations of the future (Alexander, 2009; Asimov, 1995; Freedman, 2013). In his final years, Asimov predicted the concept of online education and, in some regards the internet due to the steady reduction in the price of computers that would enable students access to connected libraries at home (Asimov, 1988, Seiler & Jenkins, 2008). In 1988, the same year the film Big became a smash hit, Asimov had a conversation with Bill Moyers where he made the big claimed that computers would give humans access to “connected libraries,” which would serve as a “teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species” (Asimov, 1988; Brooks, Greenhut, & Marshall, 2008).

Furthermore, in contrast to traditional education systems, the writer foresaw the “possibility of a one-to-one relationship for the many. Everyone can have a teacher in the form of access to the gathered knowledge of the human species” (Asimov, 1988). Asimov was inherently critical of the education system and dreamed up online learning prediction as a solution.

“Instead of having mass education as we now have, must have, with a curriculum, once we have outlets, computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference material, be something you’re interested in knowing from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else, it’s what you’re interested in — then you ask, and you can find out, and you can follow it up, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time, then everyone will enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. And everyone is different. For some it goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction” (Asimov, 1988).

The Force of the Integrated circuit

Asimov’s audacious prediction was dependent on the reduction of the cost of computers which was already in the works. In 1965, three years before co-founding Intel, researcher Gordon E. Moore predicted that the integrated circuits would lead to such wonders as home computers joined to central computer automated control for personal portable communications and automobiles (Moore, 1965; Singer, 2018). In his 1965 Electronics Magazine article titled “Cramming More Components Onto Integrated Circuits,” Moore formed his earliest forecast, now called Moore’s Law, based on his five years of semiconductor R&D that the transistor count for a minimum component cost would double every year for at least a decade (Moore, 1965; Singer, 2018). Luckily for the information age, Moore’s forecast has steadily reduced the cost and size transistors by an average of 20 to 30 percent annual which increased storage and computational power of modern computers (Flamm, 2018).

MOOC: The Black Swan of Education

In 2017, Nassim Taleb, in his article “Black Swans and the domains of statistics,” defined the term Black Swan as an occasion of great historical and cultural significance that has a profound impact on society. Ironically, Asimov’s Foundation trilogy fictional model of 99 percent predictive analytics, psychohistory, failed to account for the main character, the Mule, and the black swan event that led to the downfall of the story’s Galactic Empire (Asimov, 1995; Alexander, 2009). In a parallel manner, the shift to student-initiated learning and a current $1.5 trillion US student loan debt crisis tends another force assisting Asimov’s prediction in the rise of the Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs (Farrington, 2019).

MOOCs are a new endeavor in higher education to produce practical cost effective distance learning through “massive usage” expedited by the Internet (McAuley et al., 2010). The earliest MOOC appeared in 2008, but it was not until 2012 that a modest number of MOOC efforts obtained wide popularity worldwide and therefore dubbed “the year of the MOOC” (Moe, 2015; Pappano 2012). MOOCs are a social movement in education that offer unique kinds of courses due to its connectivity, articulated stress on interactions, openness, collectivism, and pro-knowledge-sharing stances among peers. (Belleflamme and Jacqmin 2016; Rosenberg 2005). Platforms that offer MOOCs invoke the spirit of Asimov’s prediction with their “marketplaces for knowledge” where sellers and buyers of knowledge can meet and negotiate transactions without the high cost of middle management (Rustam & van der Weide, 2016). In an ideal world, the MOOC marketplace of knowledge would maximize the utility level for all market members and optimize the delivery of knowledge resources (Shi et al., 2018).

Summary

Through the arts and entertainment, humans continue to envision a future through the lens of history and culture. Isaac Asimov made a habit of contemplating the future through his favorite medium, science fiction stories. In the process, he was able to gauge the trends and currents of the 1980s to assist him in predicting the rise of online education. Moore’s Law and MOOCs were two forces that have aided the advancement towards Asimov’s vision of online education with the later cast a potential black swan due to the disruption to traditional education and the student loan crisis. Regardless of what the near future holds, those feeling the burden of substantial student debt will need to shell out a coin and hope for a better fortune to magically appear in the morning or at least some summer travel advice from Zoltar to escape from reality.

Source: Characters Unlimited, Inc. (n.d.).

References

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