Paul Baran Predictions Part 3

Paul Baran was a pioneer in packet switching technologies. He passed away on March 26, 2011. After his passing, the Institute for the Future published 30 of his predictions for a high capacity telecommunications system.

We’re looking at all 30 and this is 21-30.

1. Adult Evening Courses on TV – Non-interactive is what Paul says. We have this and have exceeded it by many magnitudes of coolness. This was probably his weakest prediction.
2. Banking Services – Absolutely. Think about how far out this was when Paul made this prediction. ATMs hadn’t even entered use, but Paul thinks the whole world will be using online banking.
3. Legal Information – Hello, Legal Zoom. Past this the entire Federal and most state court systems are 100% online now.
4. Special Sales Information – This is fascinating. Paul says that sales information based on geography and pricing will “flash” on the home user’s screen. Paul figured local out before anyone else.
5. Consumers’ Advisory Service – He specifically mentions Consumer Reports, but goes on to say how the reviews will aggregated like many of the shopping sites of today.
6. Weather Bureau – Hello, Weather.com, Wunderground.com, etc.
7. Bus, Train and Air Scheduling – Paul nailed it, but mentioned specifically all the information available with one call. If you replace that with text or browse, he nailed it.
8. Restaurants – Paul describes being able to drill down to the type you want based on cuisine, price, etc. and then seeing a menu and sample of dishes. Perfect.
9. Library Access – Oh, this was a miss. Paul thought we’d be able to call the library and have a librarian send us a “slow scan video transmission” of a book or magazine.
10. Index, All Services Served by the Home Terminal – We sort of have this if your ISP charges by the byte. We don’t have this if you look at all the services you subscribe to. For instance, there isn’t one site that shows all my transactions at Amazon, Netflix or even Pandora.

The last set of predictions were more hit and miss, especially the library one.

Related posts:

1. Paul Baran Predictions Part 2
2. Paul Baran Predictions Part 1 photo
3. Paul Baran Predictions Part 2 photo
4. Paul Baran Predictions Part 1
5. IT project management success advice – part three