How to Future

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A good futurist focuses on the 3 time phases: past, present, future.

The best futurists I know are really keen historians and study the past to see the future. They look carefully at the past because most of what will happen tomorrow is already happening today. In addition, most of the things in the future will be things that don’t change, so they are already here. For example, most of the things surrounding you right now are old technologies — wood tables, concrete blocks, water pipes, flooring, electrical wires, wool carpets, etc. They were invented centuries ago, but today they fill 90% of our lives. Maybe only 10% is new stuff. The bulk of our lives is located in the past. It is highly likely that in 100 years or even 500 years, the bulk of the stuff surrounding each person will be old stuff, stuff that is being invented today. All this stuff, plus our human behaviors, which are very old, will continue to steer our lives in the future. We will be shaped by our long past as animals, as humanoids, as people walking out of Africa. That momentum will continue. Studying the past and its behavior gives us great insight into our future.

The second phase is to study the now. It is often said that most futurists are really predicting the present. It turns out that the present is very hard to see. First the present is obscured by the noise of 8 billion lives looking for attention, and it is overwhelmed by the flashy glitter of the new. Mostly the now is obscured by our deep assumptions and prejudices which makes it very difficult to actually see what is going on. We have labels which are handy, but can often mislead us. On average are people today happy? Do people like change? These answers are hard to see. So a good futurist spends a lot of time trying to decipher the present and to try to see it through the mask of present-day biases. Most of conventional wisdom is true, but sometimes it is very wrong. I sometimes think of “seeing the present” as tryin…