Every forecast is wrong
Last night I was reading Natural Capitalism, a great book about the future of industry and design. I highly recommend it to anyone building or buying anything–that’s everyone, by the way. On page 100, there’s this great quote from Stewart Brand:
Every building is a forecast. Every forecast is wrong.
As we design technology and human systems to meet our current needs, if we’re not thinking about how those needs will change we’re doomed to fail. Needs absolutely will change, and the things we’ve built will be asked to meet those new needs. They’ll do it gracefully or kicking and screaming, depending on how we designed the original system.
When you’re choosing and customizing a technology system to meet your needs today, consider how hard it will be to modify it to meet your needs tomorrow. Be kind to the person who someday will be tweaking your system to meet new needs–it may be you.
