In myeyes, Clarke?s legacy isn?t his voluminous body of work, but rather hisinspiration to believe that nothing in technology is impossible.
In thedying days of World War II, a little known British Royal Air Force officerworking in radar-guided aircraft navigation wrote a memo to his superiors aboutthe possibility of launching geosynchronous satellites in orbit fortelecommunications. His memo was ignored.
Theofficer then submitted an article on the topic to a telecommunicationsmagazine, which also dismissed the idea, calling it too fantastical. It was1945, and space travel was nothing more than the subject of pulp novels.Dismissing such ideas wasn?t illogical, since few people knew the atom wasabout to be cracked and commercial air travel was still in its infancy.
Nevertheless,this RAF officer is credited with coming up with the concept of satellite-basedtelecommunications, a technology and industry that wouldn?t become a practicalpossibility until 1957 when the Russians launched Sputnik. His name, of course,was Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his novel and movie ?2001: A SpaceOdyssey.?
Clarke,who died yesterday, was a visionary. He understood the insuppressible powerthat came when someone combines imagination and technology. Over the course ofprolific writing and research career, Clarke pushed the boundaries of theconceptual, exploring the origins of our species and potential of ourtechnology.
Technologyand business is replete with stories of people who conceived of fantasticalideas that were initially dismissed because conventional wisdom decreed thatthere would be no markets for their inventions or that development wasimpossible. Yet, we live in a world that is full of commonplace tools that makebusiness and life easier.
Considerthis: In 2001, Clarke and his collaborator, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick,conceived of interplanetary travel enabled by placing the crew in suspendedanimation for the long journey. Running their large ship was the HAL 9000, a computer with artificialintelligence. It was an amazing idea, considering that it was 1967 and theApollo spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the moon had lesscomputer processing power than most contemporary scientific pocket calculators.
The worldhas desktop computers, cellular phones, grid computing, portable media andtwo-way video communications because of visionaries like Clarke, who imaginedboth things he would and wouldn?t see in his lifetime. In the span of his life,attitudes have changed and innovators are not cavalierly dismissed for theirfantastical ideas. We now live in a world where anything possible, given enoughtime and ingenuity.
Businessand technology leaders should embrace their visionaries and innovators. Theyshould cultivate new ideas and give people the latitude to explore theboundaries of their technology. Every business should have the openness toexpand its potential through the eyes of their dreamers.
In myeyes, Clarke?s legacy isn?t his voluminous body of work, but rather hisinspiration to believe that nothing in technology is impossible.
LawrenceM. Walsh is editor of Baseline magazine. Share your thoughts on innovation andtechnology with him at [email protected].
