Can futurists see into the future?
(MoneyWatch) The future is analogue.
The other day I sat through a presentation from a research firm about the future: trends, technology, social change. Business bingo words proliferated: mega trends, personal net growth, smart boredom, performative work, micro-work, the quantified self. You could tell the presenter was dazzled by his own insights and eager to sell us his vision of a wired future.
No one was buying it.
Many of the trends were considered repellent; others were dismissed as fleeting; many were rejected as innovations that would never deliver. Most startling was that the consultant clearly hadn't considered that the world might not entirely be as he saw it. He thought he knew the future, but he hadn't even foreseen the reaction to his work.
That the presentation flopped illustrated some interesting aspects of thinking about the future:
1. The future hasn't happened yet. It isn't a book that's written where you can take a peek at the last chapter. So you can map trends and monitor data, but really -- no one knows.
2. Trend analysis is noise, not a signal, unless it is challenged, questioned and tested against emerging data. Just because something is happening today does not mean that it will continue tomorrow. Surely the last two decades of disruptive technologies should have shown us that today's trend is tomorrow's punchline.
3. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Trends create backwash, so no trend should be considered in isolation from the response it provokes.
At the end of a vigorous debate, a senior business leader stood up and argued that, in contrast to the consultant's shiny tech future, he thought the future was analogue. I doubt he believed that as incontrovertibly as he said it. But when it comes to the future, nothing is written -- not even by futurists.
