The number of users on the Internet worldwide is doubling every 11 months. Moreover, that doubling rate has existed for the last 17 years. In 1983, there were about 2,000 Internet users. In 2000, estimates of the number of Internet users ranged from 200 million to 375 million. If this doubling rate continues, the number of Internet users will exceed the population of the world in 2004. (Graph)

Is that possible? It depends upon what you call a user.

Trend extrapolation has been the bane and blessing of technology forecasting since H. V. Noble and his colleagues at the Avionics Laboratory at Wright Field invented it in 1952. He used it to predict the complexity of electronics in US Air Force weapon systems. (Graph) He used the projection of complexity to prove that the proposed B58 would not fly. The failure rate of vacuum tubes was too high (5%), and the B58 required so many that it would always be broken. This analysis, together with other work, led to the funding of integrated circuit development at Westinghouse and Texas Instruments.

Trend extrapolation reached almost mythical status when in 1965 Gordon Moore of Intel made the observation that each new memory integrated circuit chip had approximately twice the number of transistors as the previous chip. And, he observed that this doubling was occurring every 18 to 24 months. This trend, now called "Moore's Law", has held true for 26 years.

Trend extrapolation as a tool to forecast the future of technology is useful providing you are measuring the right parameter. You must be measuring something called a "utility function". That is, it must have some value to the industry or the market it serves. And, trend extrapolation is useful as long as there are no physical limits that prevent the projection from becoming a reality.

In the case of the integrated circuits, it's the width of the smallest circuit you can make, among other things. And, this depends upon the wavelength of the light used. Smaller circuit lines can be developed with ultraviolet light and x-rays, or even particles.

In the case of worldwide users of the Internet, the limit is the number of people on the earth. Or is it? It depends upon how you define a user. All sorts of devices now have Internet connections - laptop computers, cell phones, and many other wireless gadgets. In the US, it's possible for a user to have many different connections. Moreover, other devices, like your car, TV, appliances and house, may have Internet connections in the future and become "users".

So, if you define users in the broadest sense, then it is possible to have more users of the Internet than people in the world. Will that happen in 2004? Well, the 17-year trend is very convincing … but, it depends.

If I were betting my company on the forecast, I'd want a forecast based on multiple techniques (expert opinion, other types of trend analysis and combinative), not just trend extrapolation. And, I'd want to look at the forces driving usage of the Internet to determine if these same driving forces will exist in the future. And, then I want to set up a surveillance program to make sure I'm very up to date on the growth and applications of the Internet.

Do you have a critical technology or critical utility function of that technology that controls your business destiny? I bet you do, even if you don't know what it is. We can help you identify your critical technology and utility function. And, we can help you forecast that technology over the time period you're interested in.

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