Forbes.com recently published a special report on the future and futurists as ‘future-professionals’. In a series of articles critical – albeit generally unilateral – reflections are made on the future in general as well as the futurist profession and practice in particular. Furthermore, five authors share their images of a world experienced from the context of an American workplace in 2027, in a world shaped by a financial crisis. Visionaries are questioned to retrospect: what were they sure about that would happen, but didn’t? what surprised them? Forbes editors and writers jump a decade ahead and take a look at what the world could look like in terms of energy, education, health care, the internet, investing, real estate, retirement, sports, technology, travel, video games, Wall Street.

Note: Sometimes the future is now, yet just as often the now is confused with the future.

Image courtesy of Forbes.com

As for some of the general articles …

In The future is not what it used to be Quentin Hardy points to the negative, catastrophy-imbued views of the future we tend to uphold these days: experts and included. He relates the dark tone to what he calls – based upon personal experience – the Panamaribo effect, i.e. the negative mind- & moodshaping effect of our exposure to media which live by the credo “bad news sells better”, thereby obscuring ‘the good, beautiful and hopeful’ side of our world. If reality is but perception, then the make-belief world we live in is of a dark nature indeed.

In Crowdsourcing the Crystal Ball, James Surowiecki talks about the potential benefits of tapping into society’s collective intelligence (e.g. prediction markets) in order to forecast the future.

In The History of the Future Mark Lewis takes an interesting look at how we looked at the future throughout history, ranging from gazing at the stars to discovering geological time or gaining insight in evolution.

In You Can’t Predict Who Will Change The World Nassim Nicholas Taleb speaks of the Black Swans of major change, i.e. unexpected, accidental, off-radar signs of more and less worldshaking changes. He notes: “We need more tinkering: uninhibited, aggressive, proud tinkering. We need to make our own luck. We can be scared and worried about the future, or we can look at it as a collection of happy surprises that lie outside the path of our imagination.”

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2007 at 11:46 and is filed under business, foresight, future, publication, trends. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.