(continued from previous page)  CNET News.com Newsmakers June
23, 1997, Paul Saffo The pace and perversity of change  People
do feel overwhelmed by rate of change in technology. What
lessons can we learn from the past about technology to help us
into the future? Well, one thing is an old folk saying that I
learned as a small child from a cowboy. He said, "Never mistake
a clear view for a short distance." It's really true. We're
fascinated by change, even though we fear it and we're
fascinated by innovation. Our fascination leads us to a very
peculiar form of double vision.  We tend to overestimate the
short-term impacts of some threatened change, but we
underestimate the long-term implications. Either our hopes or
our fears lead us to overestimate the short term, and then when
reality fails to conform to our inflated expectations our
disappointment leads us to underestimate the long term.  We did
it with PCs. Back in 1980, everybody was saying "PCs are going
to change our lives; everybody's going to have them