Unintended Consequences

The "Law of Unintended Consequences" states that when you change a system, there will be resulting changes that you could not predict, and did not intend.

When I was in high school, our guidance counselors told us that many of us would someday have jobs that didn't even exist yet. (I, of course, didn't believe them.) Over a decade later, we have interactive designers, web developers, and information architects, all developing strategy and content for a kind of business that didn't even exist in 1990.

Here's another one: commercial color printing. In the early 90's, there were some really interesting developments in 4-color printing that basically allowed a print shop to bypass the traditional plate setup work. At the time, those in the industry thought this would mean that local print shops would take on more small but full color print jobs. What really happened? Super-short run printing met the internet, and boom! CafePress.com. Nobody saw it coming.

Even the famed Bill Gates has been incredibly, amazingly wrong. In his early 90's book "The Road Ahead", he made a lot of bold predictions about the future directions of computing, yet he was completely blind-sided by the Internet. Who would have expected a largely academic and government network managed by a non-profit entity to change the world?

This morning, Fred received a shipment of a dozen or so gorgeous full color 2006 calendars featuring his photography. Photos were uploaded to CafePress.com around 12:30am in the morning on Monday; calendars were printed a few hours later; these colorful holiday gifts were put on a truck and delivered to Fred less than two days later.

Unintended consequences are cool.