Frankly, reader, I never knew there was a job for “futurist.” Sure, I knew that there were many secular prophets, prophecies, and “books of revelation,” but “futurism? Making money for suggesting possibilities?
Suggesting probabilities makes sense because those are near term. But yes, there are actually people who make money “researching” the future. Is this the epitome of modern paradoxes? After all, the suffix re means “back” or “again.” How does one research that which has not happened? Would-be Nostradamuses take note. There’s a job for you in some university like Cambridge, the ivory tower that houses Richard Watson, a “futurist.”
The Complexity in Futurism Stems from the Complexity in Presentism
It’s intellectually dangerous to make predictions that are supposed to reach their fulfillment within a human lifetime. “Hey, didn’t you say we would all live in a single building in Dubai by now?” “Didn’t you predict that everyone would be dressed in exoskeletons to increase human strength ant-like? And didn’t you say we would see people living on Mars and in other dangerous places like American inner cities? What happened to those predictions?”
Same could be said in retrospect for Al Gore’s dire predictions about rising seas, dying polar bears, and unending droughts that have been inconveniently interrupted by atmospheric rivers. (Did you know there’s more water in Earth’s air than that contained in America’s rivers? Yep, 3.75 million-billion gallons—3.75 X 10^15 compared to 10^14 gallons. Never shy away from trivia, but don’t become a Cliff Claven, the Cheers character played by John Dezso Ratzenberger)
Anyway, Al Gore’s apocalypse did not occur as he predicted. Eustatic changes (sea level) have been millimeter size if accurately measured; most polar bear groups are flourishing, and recent snowfall and rains in California have inundated the droughty conditions that have occurred on and off in the American Southwest for centuries and even millennia. (Note that where cold ocean currents run off the western sides of continents, semiarid conditions prevail and that where mountains interrupt prevailing winds, deserts lie on their lee sides—the Mojave, Death Valley)
Gore and other climate alarmists made the mistake of predicting events that would occur in the lifetimes of the living. The mantra “only 8 to 12 years left because of climate change” intoned by people like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in 2019 puts the credibility of people in jeopardy. Let’s see, 2025 minus 2019…Holy Heat Wave! You realize you have only a half dozen years to put your affairs in order! (But then, in order for what or whom if everything will end? “Dear Children, I’d leave you stuff, but you won’t be around to enjoy it”)
So, there’s a social danger in predicting: History will scoff at failed prophets who said the world would end. I think of Harold Camping, the guy who had to revise his end of the world predictions more than once, his last big prediction being October, 2011. Camping had his own end of the world in 2013) Skirting social jeopardy, Watson, that Cambridge futurist I mentioned above, has laid out a “risk radar” and an “extinction timeline” that identify possibilities, such as those associated with current trends. He has also made an intricate mind map labeled “Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050: A Mind Map to
Stimulate Discussion about Current Events and Possible Trajectories.” *
Watson’s complex”Mega Trends” mind map has 16 categories of trends: Society, Work, Economy, Money, Food, Technology, Retail, Environment, Media, Transport, Politics, Energy, Education, Health, Security, and Values. You can peruse the map on your own (see link below), but I’ll point to some predictions here. In the last stages of development under “Work” is “First person fired by an algorithm.” In the category of “Politics” is “Open borders.” (Didn’t western countries just have those?) In “Education” the last stage is “Gamification.” (Hasn’t that happened already with no improvement in learning regardless of the number and types of games employed in classrooms and online courses?)
Your Predictions?
We plan; we adapt; we make new plans. Look at the old Soviet Union. The Soviets generated new five-year plans every three or four years.
Sometimes, we just wait for things to happen. Often we need to radically change plans because of new opportunities or roadblocks. On my car’s navigation screen the other day, this message popped up: “Emergency vehicle ahead.” Nope, I never encountered it. On a trip along I-95, I received the navigation warning “Accident ahead, take detour, the nav system directing me to some side roads. The accident? Never saw it as I traveled parallel to I-95. Went out of my way for nothing.
Life’s like that. Think of all those billions spent on climate change. Think of all those anxiety-driven people worried about climate change. They are half way to climate doom if they believe the alarmists’ mantra of 2019. And when they get to 2031 to find the world is pretty much as it has been for the last ten thousand years of Interglacial Period, then what? Still commit to spending a trillion or more dollars to fight climate change? Still blame climate change for that occasional category V hurricane? Still blame climate change for migration, forest fires, cold weather, warm weather, tornadoes, dengue fever, wars, droughts and floods, crime, plagues, animal extinction, plastic pollution, coral demise and reef proliferation…
It’s difficult enough for us to predict our own futures. As Robert Burns wrote in his poem “To a Mouse” and William Faulkner adopted for Of Mice and Men :
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
Thus, each of us can look back to see foiled plans. And each of us can hope without certainty for an ideal future now made even more uncertain by Artificial Intelligence that can enhance or disrupt our “best laid schemes.”
*University of Cambridge website. “This Cambridge Life” page: The futurist who'd like the future to slow down - just a …; Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050 - Infographics Archive ; https://www.infographicportal.com/risk-radar-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
Suggesting probabilities makes sense because those are near term. But yes, there are actually people who make money “researching” the future. Is this the epitome of modern paradoxes? After all, the suffix re means “back” or “again.” How does one research that which has not happened? Would-be Nostradamuses take note. There’s a job for you in some university like Cambridge, the ivory tower that houses Richard Watson, a “futurist.”
The Complexity in Futurism Stems from the Complexity in Presentism
It’s intellectually dangerous to make predictions that are supposed to reach their fulfillment within a human lifetime. “Hey, didn’t you say we would all live in a single building in Dubai by now?” “Didn’t you predict that everyone would be dressed in exoskeletons to increase human strength ant-like? And didn’t you say we would see people living on Mars and in other dangerous places like American inner cities? What happened to those predictions?”
Same could be said in retrospect for Al Gore’s dire predictions about rising seas, dying polar bears, and unending droughts that have been inconveniently interrupted by atmospheric rivers. (Did you know there’s more water in Earth’s air than that contained in America’s rivers? Yep, 3.75 million-billion gallons—3.75 X 10^15 compared to 10^14 gallons. Never shy away from trivia, but don’t become a Cliff Claven, the Cheers character played by John Dezso Ratzenberger)
Anyway, Al Gore’s apocalypse did not occur as he predicted. Eustatic changes (sea level) have been millimeter size if accurately measured; most polar bear groups are flourishing, and recent snowfall and rains in California have inundated the droughty conditions that have occurred on and off in the American Southwest for centuries and even millennia. (Note that where cold ocean currents run off the western sides of continents, semiarid conditions prevail and that where mountains interrupt prevailing winds, deserts lie on their lee sides—the Mojave, Death Valley)
Gore and other climate alarmists made the mistake of predicting events that would occur in the lifetimes of the living. The mantra “only 8 to 12 years left because of climate change” intoned by people like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in 2019 puts the credibility of people in jeopardy. Let’s see, 2025 minus 2019…Holy Heat Wave! You realize you have only a half dozen years to put your affairs in order! (But then, in order for what or whom if everything will end? “Dear Children, I’d leave you stuff, but you won’t be around to enjoy it”)
So, there’s a social danger in predicting: History will scoff at failed prophets who said the world would end. I think of Harold Camping, the guy who had to revise his end of the world predictions more than once, his last big prediction being October, 2011. Camping had his own end of the world in 2013) Skirting social jeopardy, Watson, that Cambridge futurist I mentioned above, has laid out a “risk radar” and an “extinction timeline” that identify possibilities, such as those associated with current trends. He has also made an intricate mind map labeled “Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050: A Mind Map to
Stimulate Discussion about Current Events and Possible Trajectories.” *
Watson’s complex”Mega Trends” mind map has 16 categories of trends: Society, Work, Economy, Money, Food, Technology, Retail, Environment, Media, Transport, Politics, Energy, Education, Health, Security, and Values. You can peruse the map on your own (see link below), but I’ll point to some predictions here. In the last stages of development under “Work” is “First person fired by an algorithm.” In the category of “Politics” is “Open borders.” (Didn’t western countries just have those?) In “Education” the last stage is “Gamification.” (Hasn’t that happened already with no improvement in learning regardless of the number and types of games employed in classrooms and online courses?)
Your Predictions?
We plan; we adapt; we make new plans. Look at the old Soviet Union. The Soviets generated new five-year plans every three or four years.
Sometimes, we just wait for things to happen. Often we need to radically change plans because of new opportunities or roadblocks. On my car’s navigation screen the other day, this message popped up: “Emergency vehicle ahead.” Nope, I never encountered it. On a trip along I-95, I received the navigation warning “Accident ahead, take detour, the nav system directing me to some side roads. The accident? Never saw it as I traveled parallel to I-95. Went out of my way for nothing.
Life’s like that. Think of all those billions spent on climate change. Think of all those anxiety-driven people worried about climate change. They are half way to climate doom if they believe the alarmists’ mantra of 2019. And when they get to 2031 to find the world is pretty much as it has been for the last ten thousand years of Interglacial Period, then what? Still commit to spending a trillion or more dollars to fight climate change? Still blame climate change for that occasional category V hurricane? Still blame climate change for migration, forest fires, cold weather, warm weather, tornadoes, dengue fever, wars, droughts and floods, crime, plagues, animal extinction, plastic pollution, coral demise and reef proliferation…
It’s difficult enough for us to predict our own futures. As Robert Burns wrote in his poem “To a Mouse” and William Faulkner adopted for Of Mice and Men :
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
Thus, each of us can look back to see foiled plans. And each of us can hope without certainty for an ideal future now made even more uncertain by Artificial Intelligence that can enhance or disrupt our “best laid schemes.”
*University of Cambridge website. “This Cambridge Life” page: The futurist who'd like the future to slow down - just a …; Mega Trends and Technologies 2017-2050 - Infographics Archive ; https://www.infographicportal.com/risk-radar-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/
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