What would be the future? It’s difficult to predict. But using our knowledge of evolution, we may get closer to predicting it. To predict something, you need two elements as an abstract level: a) Knowhow on characteristics of it, and b) Outer parameters that are affecting it. Let me explain:
If weather department is trying to predict the weather for tomorrow, it will check for its characteristics… For example:
- Last 5000 years has witnessed that there are three seasons – winter, summer, and monsoon.
- Last 100 years has witnessed that overall temperature on earth is rising.
- Last 4 months data says, winter has been completed and summer is already started.
- Last 30 days are saying temperature has increased as an average of 1 degree per 5 days. etc.
From this information, weather data can understand, what would be the possibility. In current case, by going through historical data, weather department would know for sure – Temperature would rise but they won’t be in a position to predict how soon? Timing part won’t be answered by this – This is the part A.
Now, they will look for the parameters with intensity of effect on the weather.
- What’s the effect of Sun on earth in these days?
- What’s the geography and angle of the rays of sun?
- What’s the humidity level?
- What’s the wind direction?
- How far it is from sea?
- What’s the level of CO2 in air?
- Are there any depletion of Ozone layer? Etc.
This information helps weather department to predict how soon heat is gonna affect? – This is the part B
So, if I summarize, it needs the historical data to understand characteristics of weather (or anything that needs to be predicted), and identification of the parameters that are affecting it.
I will try to utilize this knowledge to visualize what would be the future?
When homo sapiens sapien has first learned to sow the seeds, agriculture industry has been born. During initial years, you would see that industry gets fascination from people from the products perspective. We were amazed to see tomatoes being red and juicy, onions being the leaves type of vegetable tasting differently, roots like carrots were amazing to eat at anytime of the day, etc. It was the time when these vegetables were at peak period.
During that time, each agricultural product that was different than others were able to sustain. There were lots of me-too products and were competing with each other. For example – different sub-varieties of tomatoes, carrots, etc. were fighting for their share. When I say they were fighting, actually people who were doing farming were fighting. Parameters of success were how juicy, how delicious, how bulky, how fast they can grow, etc.
Then came the grains where farmers started growing them and selling it as a product. But you can’t consume it as a row. They are useless if you wish to eat that way… you have to do something of that, you need to transform them. Some of the grains were boiled and consumed, some were grinded and items were made from the flour, while some were just sprouted & consumed, or sprouted & boiled and then consumed. This was onset for transforming the raw products into more delicious product.
World was not limited to vegetables and grains only, there were many other categories e.g. fruits, pulses, spices, seeds, etc. But the distinctive pattern was a) you eat them raw, or b) you transform them to meet your taste.
It took many years to transform from a to b. From the “growing something and getting fascinated about that” — to — “getting different such grown agricultural products and transforming them”.
Current market is not of the agriculture products but transformed products. – Does this ring a bell?
Match that with the IT industry. We are getting fascinated by lots of products now. ERP products, CRM products, AI products, IoT products, etc. We live in the era when raw products were consumed. (and it is not wrong!) That means we have not yet tasted delicious food yet… which is transformed products!
In the future, the way products are worshipped, transformed products would be worshipped. Grains in current era are APIs. You can’t eat them as raw, but you need to utilize them in your recipe such a way that it would taste delicious. Right now, lots of big farmers like IBM, Google, Amazon, Microsoft are producing different products like cognitive, maps, cloud, machine learning, etc. Exposure of the APIs are everywhere and they are competing against each other on different parameters like who can build it fast? Who can make it robust? Who can bring accuracy? – Based on their different characteristics, they are co-existing in the world, finding their niche, and differentiating.
But future won’t be that, future would be how well can you identify which APIs are more relevant, more useful, and more effective. When do you use which API, and how well do you prepare solution that would meet taste of your customer set?
By going through the transformation part, we know that how would the future look like. If we study and identify different parameters that would play as booster, catalysts, or rebellious, we can know how soon that would be into reality?