Consider again that whirling vortex of the 1990s, the dot- com bubble. Plenty new was happening, but underlying the revolution were deep, unchanging consumer desires and ul- timately, to the sorrow of many a start-up, unchanging laws of economics. By focusing on the novelties, many missed the fact that consumers were using their new broadband links to buy very traditional items like books and engage in old human activities like gossip, entertainment, and por- nography. And though the future-lookers pronounced it to be a time when the old rules no longer applied, the old economic imperatives applied with a vengeance and the dot-com bubble burst just like every other bubble before it. Anyone who had taken the time to examine the history of economic bubbles would have seen it coming.
Against this backdrop, it is important to note that there are moments when forecasting is comparatively easy – and other moments when it is impossible. The cone of uncer- tainty is not static; it expands and contracts as the present rolls into the future and certain possibilities come to pass while others are closed off. There are thus moments of un- precedented uncertainty when the cone broadens to a point at which the wise forecaster will demur and refrain from making a forecast at all. But even in such a moment, one can take comfort in the knowledge that things will soon settle down, and with the careful exercise of intuition, it will once again be possible to make a good forecast.