PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE
Cases of competitive one-to-one natural substitutions abound. Nebojsa
Nakicenovic has studied technological substitutions and has come up
with many examples that fit the straight-line description. The longest
one is between two broad categories of primary energy sources: traditional
and commercial. In the traditional energy sources category
Nakicenovic put fuel wood, water and wind power (mills, waterfalls,
and so forth), and the output from work animals as measured by the energy
content of the food consumed. In the commercial energy sources
he included coal, crude oil, natural gas, hydroelectric, and nuclear energy.
Nakicenovic obtained a good straight-line description for the substitution
of traditional energy sources by commercial ones (Appendix C,
Figure 6.2). Ninety percent of US energy needs were met by traditional
sources in 1850, but close to 1 percent in 1980. This decline has been a
natural process. The dependence on commercial energy would trace out
an almost complete S-curve if graphed on a linear scale. Occasional
short-term deviations from the straight line can be rationalized—for example—the
short-term comeback of traditional sources during the
Depression.
There are many competitive substitutions that proceeded naturally in
the automotive industry. Cars were introduced with open bodies, and it
took close to thirty years for 90 percent of them to be enclosed. More
recently and at a faster pace—ten years—disk brakes replaced drum
brakes, and radial tires replaced diagonal ones. Similarly, power steering
and unleaded gasoline took over from their predecessors.
Natural substitutions are responsible for most popular trends and
would trace a straight line on a logarithmic scale. Consider the American
workforce, for example. Among the megatrends of today is the
growth in the information content of jobs and in the increasing role of
women. With data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and through my
analysis I found straight lines for the historical evolution of the respective
percentages. The extrapolations of these lines quantified the trends
until the end of the twentieth century. Projections obtained in this way
should be rather reliable because they follow the natural-growth path of
the process (Appendix C, Figure 6.3).
Noninformation workers are manual laborers in service occupations,
manufacturing and repair, construction, farming forestry, and fishing.
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