PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE
THE OVERALL PERSONAL “VEHICLE” MARKET KEPT INCREASING
EVEN AS THE USE OF HORSES DECLINED
Thousands of
units
100000
10000
1000
Horses
Cars
Total
Fitted S-curve
100
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020
FIGURE 6.2 The numbers of nonfarming horses (including mules) and cars in
the United States. The vertical scale is logarithmic to accommodate the manyfold
growth. The sum of horses plus cars grew practically unaffected across the
substitution period and is amenable to an S-curve fit (thick gray line). ∗
Other evidence may be to know independently that in a certain geographical
or market segment these two are the only companies that
offer products. In the latter case the geographical or market segment
constitutes a niche, but whether or not a substitution process is taking
∗ A graph of similar nature was first published by Nebosja Nakicenovic in “The Automotive
Road to Technological Change: Diffusion of the Automobile as a Process of
Technological Substitution,” Technological Forecasting and Social Change, vol. 29:
309–40. Copyright 1986 by Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc.
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