One of my favorite science fiction novels of all time isNeuromancer, by William Gibson. It is hailed as one of thebest SF novels of recent decades and it was the first winner ofscience fiction's "triple crown"—the Nebula Award, the Philip K.Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It is considered a benchmark in thecyberpunk subgenre and it is the first work that popularized theterm "cyberspace," a word that Gibson first used in an earlierwork, and which would be used to describe the early days of theWorld Wide Web. 

Published in 1984, the book was way ahead of its time,envisioning not just a PC revolution, but an advanced version ofthe Internet where users would interface directly with their minds.The story is of a hacker named Case who is one bad day away from adrug-addled suicide, and how he is recruited by a bunch of shadycharacters to rehabilitate himself and pull off the greatest hackcyberspace has ever seen. The book is filled with a unique lingoand a supercharged vision of the future that borders onintoxicating for any tech geek who reads it.

One might be tempted to think that Gibson was himself atechno-savant, but that is not so. He knew nothing of computerswhen he wrote the novel. Its inspiration came from when he saw somekids engrossed by a stand-up videogame and he imagined a worldwhere you could actually enter the game and become one with thecomputerized world within. He did not even own a computer at thetime. Science fiction's greatest novel about the future ofnetworked computing and its effect on human culture was banged outon a Depression-era manual typewriter.

As much as I love Neuromancer, I love the story behindit just as much, because that underscores the central reality oftechnology: if you think you can use the latest tech to get aheadof the curve, you won't stay there for very long, and chances are,by the time you can afford to upgrade again, you will be hopelesslyobsolete. Just ask anyone who has a stack of old laptops in theirbasement, and they'll tell you.

My father fell into this, once. He ran his own small law firm,and in the early 1980s, he bought a Sulcus point-of-sale computersystem for his office. It cost a small fortune, and since Sulcus isno longer around anymore, I can't really tell you what the systemdid, except that it really improved the efficiency of his mainbusiness, which was title searches and real estate settlements. Foryears, he used that system…well beyond its intended lifespan. Buthe was so determined to squeeze every last nickel from hisinvestment that by the time he got rid of it, office PC systemswere commonplace, and the poor guy was a bit like Rip van Winkle,struggling to comprehend just how much more a new system could dofor his office, and just how much less it was going to cost him toupgrade. As I explained to him what his new system could do, hekept asking me, "Yeah, but can it write checks?" Yes, Dad. It canwrite checks.

I tell these stories because the insurance world is one that wasvisionary in its early adoption of computer technology, but like mydad, it was so attached to its huge early investment, it keptlegacy systems going for decades more than it probably should have.Today, insurers are aggressive IT spenders, but there is always thefeeling that there is more ground to be caught up, both in terms ofhow carriers, agents and brokers can automate and digitizeunderwriting, record-keeping, policy issuance, claims handling andother core functions. And that is to say nothing of innovationssuch as predictive modeling, cloud computing, field use of variousmobile technologies, and the like.

It is a great time to be driving the IT usage of the insuranceindustry, for as much as it has improved its own efficiencies,there is still so plenty more that can be done. And it is in thatspirit that I welcome you to this inaugural issue of the newTech Decisions. Going forward, we will be producing thislong-running title as a quarterly custom supplement that will focuson the newest innovations across insurance technology, from carriersystems to consumer applications to social media and everything inbetween. We hope you will enjoy this new chapter in our history…andyours.

— Bill Coffin, Group Editorial Director