Oooo ! Let's See What the Futurists are Doing !

[Michael Hardner]

I use the term 'futurist' with about the same level respect as 'psychic', although I have to say I think psychics are probably more useful to society, and less of a distraction maybe too.

I decided to survey the top hits on 'futurist' for Google News and see what I got:

Google engineering director Ray Kurzweil is famous for the strides he has made in machine learning, speech recognition and music technology. But there is something he'd rather be known for: achieving immortality.

Dr Peter Diamandis went over his presentation slides at The Government Summit on Tuesday, there were plenty of raised eyebrows.

In the future, the slides suggested, privacy will be a thing of the past, robots will take over our jobs, 3D printers will pop out everything from human organs to houses, and man will mine asteroids in deep space for unfathomable mineral wealth.

Futurist Tim Longhurst: Focus on core operations and edge thinking. Longhurst also online outlines trends that are impacting peoples lives.

These are the rise of cyborgs part human, part machine as mobile devices become part of our lives; websearch (exemplified by Google), and social media.

Hazel Hendersons publication builds on her lifetime of achievements. It lays out a road map advocating a paradigm shift to a new future through a multi-disciplinary approach, integrated systems thinking, and the adoption of new values and innovation, offering a blueprint for a transition to a green economy.

There were pages and pages more, by the way, most of them hawking a seminar whereby they prognosticate. So go ahead and book yourself a futurist. They wear suits, unlike Psychics who were turbans, maybe costume jewelry, and they charge a lot more.

[GostHacked]

Futurist is trending/predicting the future through analysis of current events. Some may have the wrong idea, but at least it is based on more information than what a psychic gets. Psychics are complete hogwash.

This kind of ties into the topic in another thread about 'Creative Destruction'.

[Bonam]

What is it about futurists that you find disagreeable, MH? Many of the individuals you mention are highly intelligent and successful, and present interesting evidence to back up their speculations about what the future may be like. Futurists do not claim to foretell the future, but simply offer their opinions on what it may be like, with reasoning to back up said opinions to varying extents. Trying to understand what the future may be like is extremely important, as many economic and social policies in our nations are based on projecting things 5, 10, 20, or even more years in the future. In making such projections, those who make decisions often ignore the role of advancing technology and the paradigm shifts that it may cause. Futurists bring attention to this often overlooked reality.

Your first example is Kurzweil. Have you read his famous essay? Have you read his famous debate regarding GNR technology with other prominent futurists? Even if one does not agree with the points or conclusions, a variety of interesting and thought-provoking ideas are presented and discussed. As a side note, almost all the predictions regarding technological progress that Kurzweil made over a decade ago have proven to be precisely correct. And of course he is precisely correct that we will achieve immortality through scientific means in the next several decades. You have only to have a passing knowledge of current advances in biology, neuroscience, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and robotics to understand the many possibilities in this regard and its inevitability.

You would do well not to dismiss unusual ideas just because you have not previously encountered them, Michael. The world is changing faster than most people realize, and it is unproductive to ignore this change.

Edited February 15, 2014 by Bonam

[Michael Hardner]

What is it about futurists that you find disagreeable, MH?

Many of the individuals you mention are highly intelligent and successful, and present interesting evidence to back up their speculations about what the future may be like.

Please accuse my flippancy, but there is just too much noise in this field. It's hard to tell the charlatans from those who could potentially offer good advice.

You would do well not to dismiss unusual ideas just because you have not previously encountered them, Michael. The world is changing faster than most people realize, and it is unproductive to ignore this change.

I didn't mean to disparage any individual, just the fact that there appears to be so many of this caught my sarcastic scorn. Far from ignoring change, I have been on MLW and on my blog encouraging non-experts to talk about that more.

[GostHacked]

Please accuse my flippancy, but there is just too much noise in this field. It's hard to tell the charlatans from those who could potentially offer good advice.

That is a problem when dealing with any group. You have to wade through some of the crap to get to the good stuff. There are genuine people and then there are those who jump on a bandwagon to make money. You'll need to parse the information yourself to know if it's valid or not.

[Queenmandy85]

Predicting the future, while entertaining, is based on the absence of unforeseen events such as the 9/11 attack or the effect of climate change in the fourth century that brought down the European wing of the Roman empire.

I sat in a lecture presented by Gwynne Dyer in the lead up to the First Gulf War. His predictions were all based on solid analysis. He is an excellent military historian and analyst and few of his predictions were correct.

We are facing three inter-related issues. The build up of greenhouse gases and the end of economically viable oil supply both are caused by over population. These three problems are going to have a dramatic impact on our future. No one can predict what that will mean. Then, again, an asteroid could take us out before we sit down to dinner tonight.

Have a nice day.

[TimG]

I sat in a lecture presented by Gwynne Dyer in the lead up to the First Gulf War. His predictions were all based on solid analysis. He is an excellent military historian and analyst and few of his predictions were correct.

I remember the same lectures. He was very insightful until he bought into AGW alarmism. After that he turned into a joke because he based his analysis on scientifically unsupportable claims about the likely consequences of CO2 induced warming. He would have been better served if he had applied the same skepticism he applies to the claims of political figures to the claims of scientists in search of funding.

[GostHacked]

Predicting the future, while entertaining, is based on the absence of unforeseen events such as the 9/11 attack or the effect of climate change in the fourth century that brought down the European wing of the Roman empire.

I sat in a lecture presented by Gwynne Dyer in the lead up to the First Gulf War. His predictions were all based on solid analysis. He is an excellent military historian and analyst and few of his predictions were correct.

We are facing three inter-related issues. The build up of greenhouse gases and the end of economically viable oil supply both are caused by over population. These three problems are going to have a dramatic impact on our future. No one can predict what that will mean. Then, again, an asteroid could take us out before we sit down to dinner tonight.

Have a nice day.

Those are wild card factors we have no control over. That kind of thing comes up regularly in history. However we can still trend the future with some accuracy.

The population boom and resource depletion was predicted. Any large population that cannot sustain itself will collapse. More people, less food. We have depleted the oceans to the point of collapse. It cannot sustain us. So it's not that people are not predicting this. It is more that people are ignoring the obvious with certain trends.

[Bonam]

I didn't mean to disparage any individual, just the fact that there appears to be so many of this caught my sarcastic scorn.

I've had the opposite impression, that there are in fact too few futurists, too few people who consider the major changes that the future will bring and instead make assumptions about the future as if everything will remain the same as today. Think of all the economic forecasts that are made 10-20 years into the future talking about national debt, solvency of various programs, demographics, etc, and how they completely ignore the role of technological changes.

[Michael Hardner]

Think of all the economic forecasts that are made 10-20 years into the future talking about national debt, solvency of various programs, demographics, etc, and how they completely ignore the role of technological changes.

I think that this is partially true, and partially understandable. I know from what posters have cited here that assumptions about future trends such as oil consumption and computing power take progress into account so that's why your statement is partially true. The partially understandable part is that you have to take a worst case scenario into account when doing an estimate. It pays to be conservative, and there's no way to incorporate paradigm-changing breakthroughs into such things.