Roy Charles Amara (7 April 1925
– 31 December 2007
) was an American researcher, scientist,
futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
and president of the
Institute for the Future
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a Palo Alto, California, US–based not-for-profit think tank. It was established, in 1968, as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation to help organizations plan for the long-term future, a subject known as ...
best known for coining Amara's law on the effect of
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
. He held a BS in Management, an MS in the Arts and Sciences, and a PhD in Systems Engineering,
and also worked at the
Stanford Research Institute
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
.
Amara's law
His
adage
An adage (; Latin: adagium) is a memorable and usually philosophical aphorism that communicates an important truth derived from experience, custom, or both, and that many people consider true and credible because of its longeval tradition, i.e. ...
about forecasting the effects of technology has become known as Amara's law and states:
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
The law has been used in explaining
nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ...
.
Selected bibliography
Books
*
*
*
*
Reports
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Published in Conference proceedings 1978 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC 1978)
Pdf.re
Roy Amaraat
DBLP
DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Nove ...
bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
References
1925 births
2007 deaths
Futurologists
American scientists
{{US-scientist-stub