Sometimes the future is easy to see. It doesn’t take a leap of faith, for example, to know that one day all telephone and Internet connections will be wireless. We can see this because we are pretty nearly there already.

Other times the future isn’t so clear. That’s because after a new technology is in use there is a muddy period before it advances enough to replace the old.

Thomas Frey, executive director of the Da Vinci Institute (http://www.davinciinstitute.com), a think tank where award-winning engineers and futurists go to ponder, calls this period “Maximum Freud.” This intersection of technology, he says, is a collision of business forces. It is “a period when industry players have to spend lots of time on the Freudian Couch to understand what’s going on. This is a period of extreme chaos, and also a period of extreme opportunity.” So how do we plan for the next era of technology and seize opportunity?

Which technologies win

There are nearly a half million inventions waiting in line at the patent office. Most of them will never make it to market and of those that do, the majority will fail.

There is, however, a way to predict which technologies will eventually take hold. You just have to answer two simple questions: First, does it have the potential to dramatically improve the quality of your personal and/or work life? And second, how far up is it on the quality-of-life pyramid?

At the very top of the pyramid, you’ll find freedom and time - that of which we have the least and value the most.

Consider the cell phone. It is far from perfect. Calls drop in the middle of our most important conversations and the cost of using a cell is double, sometimes triple, that of a landline. But the cell phone gives us two things that are far more precious to us than quality and cost: freedom and time.

We accept lower quality because we know it will improve with each generation. And when you calculate the increase in productivity you gained from being able to conduct business on the move, you realize that in the long run the cell phone really costs less than the landline.

Getting closer to home, let’s consider all-digital printing presses  - the computer-to-press kind. No plates, no blankets, just ink and paper. Assuming they could produce the end result you require, would they improve the quality of your life? Would they give you freedom and time? The answer to both questions is affirmative.

When new replaces old

There are two factors that cause a new, better technology to replace the old. The first is internally driven. The new must advance to the point where it can do the work of the current technology, or when the work of the current technology is no longer needed, whichever comes first. For example, digital presses might advance to the point where they can produce long run lengths, or run lengths will continue to get shorter to the point where the digital press becomes the more desirable technology.

In print production this process is influenced by the value of the current investments. Dumping a $20 million press isn’t something you do lightly. And as long as it can produce a product that is competitive with what the new technology can deliver, it makes economic sense to keep it running. In this case new technology will wait on the sidelines until the current technology ages.

A recent example of internal factors that led to the new replacing the old is digital photography. In the world of news delivery, the need for speed and instant transmission was far more important than the need for analog-quality images. The minute digital cameras could produce a newsprint-quality photograph, film cameras became obsolete. The benefits of the new far outweighed the comfort of the old.

The second factor, because it is externally driven, generates change more rapidly. It occurs when the demand for the new makes the old technology unprofitable or obsolete. At that point, taking a loss becomes more beneficial than maintaining the current technology.

An example of this occurred when many newspapers decided to remove the ink from the stock tables and replace it with pixels. They did this for two reasons. They were faced with competition from online sources and readers preferred to follow market fluctuations as they happened. Basically, new technology served readers’ lust for time and freedom - something no press of any value can do.

Seizing opportunity

Seizing opportunity is what you need to do during the transition period - what Frey calls Maximum Freud. This is when it becomes clear that the new technology is capable of dramatically improving the quality of your life. During this time, far-sighted companies will use the new technology to supplement current offerings. A digital press, such as Kodak’s Versamark, Agfa’s Dotrix, HP’s Indigo or Oce’s 3-color VarioStream 9230, would be used to produce niche publications, short-run inserts or promotional materials. This is when visionary newspapers learn what it takes to operate, maintain and integrate the technology into the current mix so that when the time comes for the new to replace the old, they will be ready.