Paul Saffo spends a lot of his time thinking about the past. That might seem a bit odd for a man who makes his living as a futurist, but perspective is critical, argues Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future, a Silicon Valley think tank that contemplates the way things will be.
"We're adjusting better to technology than people think," he explained in an interview last week. He acknowledges the fears articulated by Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, and Bill Joy, the founder of Sun Microsystems whose ruminations on the darkness ahead have unsettled the valley. But Saffo believes "the unease we feel is part of the process of evolution."
In a time when a new wonder-technology is unveiled every three months, the model for the digital lifestyle is updated every six months and when the power of a chip doubles every 18 months, Saffo opts for the long view. "There is a new wave every 30 or 40 years," he said. "At the turn of the century it was chemistry, then it was physics, then information technology. Now, we're on the cusp of the biological revolution.